VoxEU Talk
Children: consumption goods or investment goods?
By analysing the effects of a pension reform in Italy, Vincenzo Galasso of Bocconi University has been able to explore why people might decide to have children – because they like them or to provide security in old age. In an interview recorded at the annual congress of the European Economic Association in Milan in August 2008, he talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his surprising finding that people facing the prospect of reduced pension benefits when they retire have increased their fertility.
