The Trade-off between Fertility and Education: Evidence from before the Demographic Transition

Sascha Becker, Francesco Cinnirella, Ludger Woessmann and Sascha O. Becker
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Sascha O. Becker

No 2775, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The trade-off between child quantity and education is a crucial ingredient of unified growth models that explain the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern growth. We present first evidence that such a trade-off indeed existed before the demographic transition, exploiting a unique census-based dataset of 334 Prussian counties in 1849. Estimating two separate instrumental-variable models that instrument education by landownership inequality and distance to Wittenberg and fertility by previous-generation fertility and sex-imbalance ratio, we find that causation between fertility and education runs both ways. Furthermore, education in 1849 predicts the fertility transition in 1880-1905.

Keywords: schooling; fertility transition; unified growth theory; 19th-century Prussia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J13 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp2775.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The trade-off between fertility and education: evidence from before the demographic transition (2010)
Working Paper: The trade-off between fertility and education: Evidence from before the demographic transition (2010)
Working Paper: The Trade-off between Fertility and Education: Evidence from before the Demographic Transition (2009)
Working Paper: The Trade-off between Fertility and Education: Evidence from before the Demographic Transition (2009)
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:ces:ceswps:_2775

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().