Rainfall risk, fertility and development: Evidence from farm settlements during the American demographic transition

Michael Grimm

No 718, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: I analyze whether variation in rainfall risk played a role for the speed of the demographic transition among American settlers. The underlying hypothesis is that children constituted a buffer stock of labor that could be mobilized in response to income shocks. Identification relies on fertility differences between farm and non-farm households within counties and over time. The results suggest that in areas with a high variance in rainfall the fertility differential between farm households and non-farm households was significantly higher than in areas with a low variance in rainfall. This channel is robust to other relevant forces such as income, education and children’s survival as well as the spatial correlation in fertility levels. The analysis also shows that this effect was reduced and finally disappeared as irrigation systems and agricultural machinery emerged. Hence, access to risk-mitigating devices significantly contributed to the demographic transition in the US. These findings also have potentially important implications for Sub-Saharan Africa, especially for those areas where income risks are a major threat to households and where fertility is still high and only slowly declining or not declining at all.

Keywords: demographic transition; fertility; rainfall risk; insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 N31 N32 O12 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-lab
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Journal Article: Rainfall risk, fertility and development: evidence from farm settlements during the American demographic transition (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:718

DOI: 10.4419/86788838

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