Endogenous Fertility Waves and the Dynamics of Utility in an Overlapping Generations Model
Why smaller generations end up happier than larger ones
Smaller generations have measurably higher quality of life than larger generations — even when the overall economy is performing well. This gap exists because smaller cohorts benefit from higher wages and better living standards, driven by the fertility choices their parents made, regardless of whether the economy is saving too much or too little.
This finding reshapes how economists think about population cycles and intergenerational fairness. Rather than treating fertility and economic growth as purely technical problems, it shows that the size of your birth cohort directly determines your lifetime welfare — a hard constraint that policy cannot easily escape through savings rates or capital investment alone.