Analysis of marital fertility in rural Derry c. 1911 confirms the presence even then of a gap between Catholics and Protestants. The difference was small, however, compared to today's, and for couples who had married before the mid-1880's it was insignificant. Various indicators of 'wealth' suggest that, all else equal, wealthier couples have more children, thereby suggesting that children are a 'normal good' in the economic sense. At given values of the 'wealth variables', labourers tend to have more children than farmers. Controlling for these economic factors tends to widen the fertility gap between Catholics and Protestants.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
6.