NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Human Capital, Fertility, and Economic Growth

Gary S. Becker, Kevin M. Murphy, Robert F. Tamura

NBER Working Paper No. 3414*
Issued in August 1990
NBER Program(s):   EFG

Our model of growth departs from both the Malthusian and neoclassical

approaches by including investments in human capital. We assume, crucially,

that rates of return on human capital investments rise, rather than, decline,

as the stock of human capital increases, until the stock becomes large. This

arises because the education sector uses human capital note intensively than

either the capital producing sector of the goods producing sector. This

produces multiple steady scares: an undeveloped steady stare with little

human capital, low rates of return on human capital investments and high

fertility, and a developed steady stats with higher rates of return a large,

and, perhaps, growing stock of human capital and low fertility. Multiple

steady states mean that history and luck are critical determinants of a

country's growth experience.

*Published: Journal of Public Economics, October 1990

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