Human Capital and Fertility in Chinese Clans Before Modern Growth

Carol Shiue ()

No 19661, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A stylized fact of modern growth is that as countries become richer, education levels rise while family size decreases. This paper provides evidence that well before the onset of modern growth, changes in the return to education affected household choice of children's quantity versus quality. The setting is in Anhui Province, China over the 13th to 20th centuries. I show that the civil service examination system underwent long-term changes affecting the return to education, providing a means to test whether incentives for acquiring education affected fertility decisions. Employing an intergenerationally-linked dataset drawn from over 43,000 individuals, I first show that as the state examination’s discretionary practices had been largely eliminated by the 17th century, increasing the return to education, households with a lower number of children had a higher chance that one of their sons would substantially invest into human capital. Second, I demonstrate that this negative relationship between fertility and education disappeared with a fall in the return to education due to the deterioration of the state examination system in the 19th century. Taken together, my findings provide support for the hypothesis that fertility choices respond to changes in the return to human capital. The implications of these findings for theories of economic development are discussed.

JEL-codes: I25 J11 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-his and nep-hrm
Note: EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Carol H. Shiue, 2017. "Human capital and fertility in Chinese clans before modern growth," Journal of Economic Growth, vol 22(4), pages 351-396.

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Journal Article: Human capital and fertility in Chinese clans before modern growth (2017)
Working Paper: Human Capital and Fertility in Chinese Clans Before Modern Growth (2013)
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