The trade-off between fertility and education: Evidence from before the demographic transition
The trade-off between child quantity and quality is a crucial ingredient of unified growth models that explain the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern growth. We present first evidence that such a trade-off indeed existed already in the nineteenth century, exploiting a unique census-based dataset of 334 Prussian counties in 1849. Furthermore, we find that causation between fertility and education runs both ways, based on separate instrumental-variable models that instrument fertility by sex ratios and education by landownership inequality and distance toWittenberg. Education in 1849 also predicts the fertility transition in 1880-1905.
Year of publication: |
2010
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Authors: | Becker, Sascha O. ; Cinnirella, Francesco ; Wößmann, Ludger |
Institutions: | Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München |
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