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               EHS Abstract Submission 
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              Name:  Mauro Boianovsky 
             Email:  [log in to unmask]  
       Institution:  Universidade de Brasilia 
 
         Co-author: 
 
             Title:  Economists as Demographers: Wicksell and Pareto on 
Population 
 
      Type of work:  C 
 
  Internet Address 
of abstracted work: 
 
           By mail: 
                     Department of Economics 
                     Universidade de Brasilia 
                     Brasilia DF 70910-900 
                     Brazil 
 
          Language:  English 
 
          Abstract: 
   Demography established itself as a separate discipline in the last 
quarter of the 19th century and especially the first two decades of the 
20th (the Lotka era). That was also the period when neoclassical economics 
became dominant. Many historians of thought have suggested that this 
development can be in part explained by the irrelevance of population 
growth for the statical marginal utility system, in contrast with the 
dynamic approach of classical economics. But this is a non sequitur. The 
question that should be asked is whether neoclassical economists applied 
the concept of utility maximization to the study of population. I argue 
that the topic was an important one for Knut Wicksell and Vilfredo Pareto, 
who introduced, respectively, the notions of optimum population (the 
population size that maximizes utility per capita) and of what may be 
called Pareto optimum population (the rate of population growth consistent 
with competitive efficiency). Like the classical economists before them, 
Wicksell and Pareto did not contribute to the hard core of demography, with 
the possible exceptions of the use by Wicksell of a succession of survival 
curves to interpret the age composition of population, and of the fitting 
of a curve to mortality date, carried out by Pareto. Their contributions to 
the interdisciplinary periphery of demography were not, however, extended 
to the treatment of children as consumption goods and to the discussion of 
time allocation decisions by parents. Interestingly enough, it was Lujo 
Brentano, a member of the so-called German Historical School, who 
introduced those elements in his interpretation of demographic transition 
in early 20th century. 
 
      Bibliography:  Chapter 5 in G. Erreygers (ed): Economics and 
Interdisciplinary Exchange. London: Routledge, 2001. 
 
           Subject:  B13 
 Geographical Area:  0 
    Country/Region: 
 
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