Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP8339
Authors: Sascha O. Becker; Francesco Cinnirella; Ludger Woessmann
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 Codes: J13; J24; N33
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| women's education (I24) | knowledge about fertility control (J13) |
| women's education (I24) | preferences toward consumer goods instead of child quantity (D19) |
| landownership inequality in 1816 (Q15) | women's education (I24) |
| women's education (I24) | fertility (J13) |
| landownership inequality in 1816 (Q15) | fertility (J13) |
| female enrollment rates in 1816 (I24) | fertility (J13) |