The limited effect of increasing educational attainment on childlessness trends in twentieth-century Europe, women born 1916-65.

During the twentieth century, trends in childlessness varied strongly across European countries while educational attainment grew continuously across them. Using census and large-scale survey data from 13 European countries, we investigated the relationship between these two factors among women born between 1916 and 1965. Up to the 1940 birth cohort, the share of women childless at age 40+ decreased universally.

Why increasing longevity may favour a PAYG pension system over a funded system.

When pension systems are contrasted it is common to use simplified demographic models, such as overlapping generation models with time-invariant mortality. Breaking with this tradition, we show that for a population with increasing longevity, the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system may be more advantageous than a funded system (FS). Increasing longevity favours the PAYG system because for the workers living longer at retirement than current retirees, it is less costly to fund others' current pensions than their own.