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The Effect of Investment in Children's Education on Fertility in 1816 PrussiaSascha O. BeckerUniversity of Warwick; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Ifo Institute for Economic Research Francesco CinnirellaCESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research) - Ifo Institute for Economic Research Ludger WoessmannIfo Institute for Economic Research; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research); University of Munich - Ifo Institute for Economic Research November 23, 2010 CESifo Working Paper Series No. 3252 Abstract: The interaction between investment in children’s education and parental fertility is crucial in recent theories of the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern economic growth. This paper contributes to the literature on the child quantity-quality trade-off with new county-level evidence for Prussia in 1816, several decades before the demographic transition. We find a significant negative causal effect of education on fertility, which is robust to accounting for spatial autocorrelation. The causal effect of education is identified through exogenous variation in enrollment rates due to differences in landownership inequality. A comparison with estimates for 1849 suggests that the preference for quality relative to quantity might have increased during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 27 Keywords: education, fertility, quantity-quality trade-off, unified growth theory, 19th century, Prussia JEL Classification: N33, I20, J13 working papers seriesDate posted: November 25, 2010Suggested CitationContact Information
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