Fecundity, Fertility and Family Reconstitution Data: The Child Quantity-Quality Trade-O Revisite

Jacob Weisdorf and Marc Klemp

No 9121, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Growth theorists have recently argued that western nations grew rich by parents substituting child quantity (number of births) for child quality (education). Using family reconstitution data from historical England, we explore the causal link between family size and human capital of offspring measured by their literacy status and professional skills. We use a proxy of marital fecundity to instrument family size, finding that children of couples of low fecundity (and hence small families) were more likely to become literate and employed in a skilled profession than those born to couples of high fecundity (and hence large families). Robust to a variety of specifications, our findings are unusually supportive of the notion of a child quantity-quality trade-off, suggesting this could well have played a key role for the wealth of nations.

Keywords: Child quantity-quality trade-off; Demographic transition; Human capital formation; Industrial revolution; Instrumental variable analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 N3 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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