Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP13412
Authors: Emeline Bezin; Bastien Chabferret; David de la Croix
Abstract: Fertility becomes a strategic choice when having a larger population helps to gain power. Minority groups might find it optimal to promote high fertility among their members - this is known as the "weapon of the womb" argument. If, in addition, parents have to invest resources to educate their children, a higher fertility for strategic motives might reduce their investment. Indonesian census data dispel this view, as minority religious groups do not invest less in education. If anything, they invest more in education, as well as in their number of children. This finding is consistent with human capital being an input to appropriation. Solving for the Nash equilibrium of a game between two groupswith two strategic variables, we derive the condition under which the minority group displays a higher investment in both the quantity and quality of children. The material cost of conflict involved through the weapon of the womb mechanism is mitigated when human capital enters the contest function.
Keywords: fertility; quality-quantity tradeoff; minorities; conflict; population engineering; human capital; Nash equilibrium; Indonesia
JEL Codes: D74; J13; J15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| group size (C92) | educational investment (I26) |
| group size (C92) | fertility (J13) |
| fertility (J13) | educational investment (I26) |
| human capital (J24) | educational investment (I26) |
| fertility (J13) | quantity of children (J13) |
| quantity of children (J13) | educational investment (I26) |