The US Demographic Transition

Jeremy Greenwood and Ananth Seshadri

No 487, RCER Working Papers from University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER)

Abstract: Between 1800 and 1940 the U.S. went through a dramatic demographic transition. In 1800 the average woman had 7 children, and 94 percent of the population lived in rural areas. By 1940 the average woman birthed just 2 kids, and only 43 percent of populace lived in the country. The question is: What accounted for this shift in the demographic landscape? The answer given here is that technological progress in agriculture and manufacturing explains these facts.

Keywords: fertility; technological progress; agriculture; manufacturing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E1 J1 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2002-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-dge
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://rcer.econ.rochester.edu/RCERPAPERS/rcer_487.pdf full text (application/pdf)
None

Related works:
Journal Article: The U.S. Demographic Transition (2002)
Working Paper: The U.S. demographic transition (2002)
Working Paper: The U.S. demographic transition (2001)
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:roc:rocher:487

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RCER Working Papers from University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER) University of Rochester, Center for Economic Research, Department of Economics, Harkness 231 Rochester, New York 14627 U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard DiSalvo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).