Railways and the European Fertility Transition

Carlo Ciccarelli (), James Fenske and Jordi Martí Henneberg
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Jordi Martí Henneberg: Universitat De Lleida

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: We show that the spread of the railway network slowed the decline of fertilityin Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We construct novel data on market access across sub-national regions in Europe and use both a panel fixed effects approach and an instrumental variables strategy that leverages variation in market access stemming from access to distant markets. We find that greater market access predicts higher fertility, with a standardized magnitude of 0.14. Consistent with an interpretation that market access increased fertility by raising incomes relative to the returns to child quality and the opportunity cost of childbearing, we show that our results are driven by locations that achieved higher levels of income per capita despite lagging in human capital and female labor force participation.

Date: 2023
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... erp_1477_-fenske.pdf

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Working Paper: Railways and the European Fertility Transition (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1477

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