Does Parental Education Affect Fertility? Evidence from Pre-Demographic Transition Prussia
38 Pages Posted: 4 May 2011
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Does Parental Education Affect Fertility? Evidence from Pre-Demographic Transition Prussia
Does Parental Education Affect Fertility? Evidence from Pre-Demographic Transition Prussia
Date Written: April 29, 2011
Abstract
While women’s employment opportunities, relative wages, and the child quantity‐quality trade‐off have been studied as factors underlying historical fertility limitation, the role of parental education has received little attention. We combine Prussian county data from three censuses - 1816, 1849, and 1867 - to estimate the relationship between women’s education and their fertility before the demographic transition. Despite controlling for several demand and supply factors, we find a negative residual effect of women’s education on fertility. Instrumental‐variable estimates, using exogenous variation in women’s education driven by differences in landownership inequality, suggest that the effect of women’s education on fertility is causal.
Keywords: demographic transition, female education, fertility, nineteenth century Prussia
JEL Classification: N330, J130, J240
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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