Protectionism and the Education-Fertility Trade-off in Late 19th Century France

Vincent Bignon and Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa ()

No 1604, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: The assumption that education and fertility are endogenous decisions that react to economic circumstances is a cornerstone of the unified growth theory that explains the transition to modern economic growth, yet evidence that such a mechanism was in operation before the 20th century is limited. This paper provides evidence of how protectionism reversed the education and fertility trends that were well under way in late 19th-century France. The Méline tariff, a tariff on cereals introduced in 1892, led to a substantial increase in agricultural wages, thus reducing the relative return to education. Since the importance of cereal production varied across regions, we use these differences to estimate the impact of the tariff. Our findings indicate that the tariff reduced education and increased fertility. The magnitude of these effects was substantial, and in regions with large shares of employment in cereal production the tariff offset the time trend in education for up to 15 years. Our results thus indicate that even in the 19th century, policies that changed the economic prospects of their offspring affected parents’ decisions about the quantity and quality of children.

Keywords: Education; Fertility; Unified growth theory; Protectionism; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 N33 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2016-01, Revised 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-gro and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/files/_dt/2012/wp_2016_-_nr_04.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Protectionism and the Education-Fertility Trade-off in Late 19th Century France (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1604

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France AMU-AMSE - 5-9 Boulevard Maurice Bourdet, CS 50498 - 13205 Marseille Cedex 1. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gregory Cornu ().