The toll of tariffs: The impact of protectionism on education and fertility in late 19th century France

Vincent Bignon and Cecilia García-Peñalosa ()
Additional contact information
Cecilia García-Peñalosa: CNRS, EHESS, AMSE, CEPR and CESifo

Journal of Economic Growth, 2025, vol. 30, issue 4, No 1, 495 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper asks whether macroeconomic policy can affect fertility and education by documenting a slow-down of long-term improvements in these two outcomes in the wake of a major protectionist shock that shielded low-skilled individuals from the adverse consequences of the first wave of globalisation. We build a novel dataset for 19th-century France where, following decades of rising grain imports at low prices, high tariffs on cereal were introduced in 1892, shifting relative prices in favour of agriculture and away from industry. We exploit regional data that allow us to measure differences in the intensity of the protectionist shock and find that the tariff halted the long-term increase in schooling and slowed-down the decline in fertility that were already well underway.

Keywords: Fertility; Education; Unified growth theory; Protectionism; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J13 N33 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10887-025-09256-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The toll of tariffs: The impact of protectionism on education and fertility in late 19th century France (2025)
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:kap:jecgro:v:30:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s10887-025-09256-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10887/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10887-025-09256-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Growth is currently edited by Oded Galor

More articles in Journal of Economic Growth from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().