Human capital and fertility: child vs adult survival

In this paper, we investigate the impact of child and adult survival on human capital accumulation and fertility in a model in which parents face a trade-off between investment in education and child labour. We show that adult and child survival have opposite effects on human capital accumulation. In fact, while a rise in adult longevity always has a positive impact on human capital accumulation, the rise in child survival by increasing the monetary returns of child labour, renders quantity more attractive than quality. Therefore different combinations of child and adult survival can lead to different scenarios. Thus, while policies aimed at increasing adult longevity can be an important contributing factor to improvement in education and the reduction of child labour, however, policies aimed at increasing child survival alone may be insufficient if they are not associated with ones that regulate child labour.