The Child Quantity-Quality Trade-Off During the Industrial Revolution in England

Marc Klemp and Jacob Weisdorf

No 11-16, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: We take Gary Becker's child quantity-quality trade-off hypothesis to the historical record, investigating the causal link from family size to the literacy status of offspring using data from Anglican parish registers, c. 1700-1830. Extraordinarily forhistorical data, the parish records enable us to control for parental literacy, longevity and social class, as well as sex and birth order of offspring. In a world without modern contraception and among the couples whose children were not prenuptially conceived we are able to explore a novel source of exogenous variation in family size: marital fecundability as measured by the time interval from the marriage to the first birth. Consistent with previous findings among historical populations, we document a large and significantly negative effect of family size on children's literacy.

Keywords: Child Quantity-Quality Trade-Off; Demographic Transition; Industrial Revolution; Instrumental Variable Analysis; Human Capital Formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 N3 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hrm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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