Fertility rates have been falling persistently over the past 50 years in most rich countries. Simultaneously, the trend of outward migration from poorer to richer countries has been steady. These two forces contributed to population aging, and – in an increasing number of countries – even to population decline. In this paper, we quantify the effect of decreasing fertility on the aggregate human capital stock. In doing so we take into account that parents with fewer children may raise investments in their children’s education and health. We find that the human capital impact of declining fertility is partly compensated through such responses when including the full set of countries in our regressions. For the subset of countries that experience population decline, the compensatory effect is weaker and, in many specifications, even insignificant.

过去 50 年来，大多数富裕国家的生育率持续下降。与此同时，从较贫穷国家向较富裕国家向外移民的趋势一直稳定。这两种力量导致了人口老龄化，并且在越来越多的国家中甚至导致了人口下降。在本文中，我们量化了生育率下降对人力资本存量总额的影响。在此过程中，我们考虑到孩子较少的父母可能会增加对孩子的教育和健康的投资。我们发现，当我们的回归中包含所有国家时，生育率下降对人力资本的影响可以通过此类反应得到部分补偿。对于经历人口下降的部分国家来说，补偿效应较弱，在许多方面甚至微不足道。