Did the Catholics always have Larger Families? Religion, Wealth, and Fertility in Rural Ulster Before 1911

Cormac O'Gráda
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Cormac Ó Gráda

No 6, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Analysis of marital fertility in rural Derry c. 1911 confirms the presence even then of a gap between Catholics and Protestants. The difference was small, however, compared to today's, and for couples who had married before the mid-1880's it was insignificant. Various indicators of 'wealth' suggest that, all else equal, wealthier couples have more children, thereby suggesting that children are a 'normal good' in the economic sense. At given values of the 'wealth variables', labourers tend to have more children than farmers. Controlling for these economic factors tends to widen the fertility gap between Catholics and Protestants.

Keywords: Fertility; Religion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1984-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=6 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:cpr:ceprdp:6

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... papers/dp.php?dpno=6

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().