Robin Hanson
Fri, 18 Jul 2003 07:22:03 -0700
I think maybe the answer is that a dictator has an economic incentive to maximize total GDP, while a voter has an incentive to maximize per capita GDP instead. ...
If the new capitas were coming from immigration this makes sense, but if they are coming from children, this doesn't make sense because people care about the existence and GDP of their children.
Also, my reading of that paper is that the total GDP effect was not statistically significant, while the fertility effect was significant.