Fertility and the Price of Children: Evidence from Slavery and Slave Emancipation

Marianne Wanamaker ()

The Journal of Economic History, 2014, vol. 74, issue 4, 1045-1071

Abstract: Theories of the demographic transition often center on the rising price of children. A model of fertility derived from household production in the antebellum United States contains both own children and slaves as inputs. Changes in slaveholdings beget changes in the marginal product of the slaveowners’ own children and, hence, their price. I use panel data on slaveowning households between 1850 and 1870 to measure the slaveowners’ own fertility responses to exogenous changes in slaveholdings. Results indicate a strong, negative correlation between own child prices and fertility.

Date: 2014
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