Humanitarian Aid, Fertility and Economic Growth

This paper examines the effect of humanitarian aid on fertility and economic growth. In an overlapping generations model, where health status in adulthood depends on health in childhood, adult agents allocate their time to work, leisure and childrearing activities. Humanitarian aid influences the probability of survival to adulthood, health in childhood, and the time that adults allocate to childrearing, giving rise to an ambiguous effect on both fertility and growth. An empirical investigation for the period 1973-2007 suggests that humanitarian aid has on average a zero effect on the rates of fertility and of per capita output growth. © The Author. Economica © 2010 The London School of Economics and Political Science.