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How the West "invented" fertility restriction

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  • Nico Voigtländer
  • Joachim Voth

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Abstract

We analyze the rise of the first socio-economic institution in history that limited fertility – long before the Demographic Transition. The "European Marriage Pattern" (EMP) raised the marriage age of women and ensured that many remained celibate, thereby reducing childbirths by up to one third between the 14th and 18th century. To explain the rise of EMP we build a two-sector model of agricultural production – grain and livestock. Women have a comparative advantage in the latter because plow agriculture requires physical strength. After the Black Death in 1348-50, land abundance triggered a shift towards the landintensive pastoral sector, improving female employment prospects. Because women working in animal husbandry had to remain unmarried, more farm service spelled later marriages. The resulting reduction in fertility led to a new Malthusian steady state with lower population pressure and higher wages. The model can thus help to explain the divergence in income per capita between Europe and Asia long before the Industrial Revolution. Using detailed data from England after 1290, we provide strong evidence for our mechanism. Where pastoral agriculture dominated, more women worked as servants, and marriage occurred markedly later. Overall, we estimate that pastoral farming raised female ages at first marriage by more than 4 years.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 1264.

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Date of creation: Dec 2008
Date of revision: Dec 2012
Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1264

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Web page: http://www.econ.upf.edu/

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Keywords: Fertility; Great Divergence; Demographic Regime; Long-Run Growth;

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Cited by:
  1. Jes�s Fern�ndez-Villaverde & Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner, 2012. "From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: A Macroeconomic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and its De-Stigmatization," Working Papers 671, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
  2. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Greenwood, Jeremy & Guner, Nezih, 2010. "From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and its De-Stigmatization," IZA Discussion Papers 4708, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. Broadberry, Stephen, 2011. "Recent developments in the theory of very long run growth: A historical appraisal," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 55, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
  4. Sandra González-Bailón & Tommy E. Murphy, 2011. "Social Interactions and Long-Term Fertility Dynamics.A Simulation Experiment in the Context of the French Fertility Decline," Working Papers 419, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
  5. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Greenwood, Jeremy & Guner, Nezih, 2011. "From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: The Rise in Premarital Sex and its Destigmitization," CEPR Discussion Papers 8667, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  6. Broadberry, Stephen; Campbell, Bruce; Klein, Alexander; Overton, Mark; Van Leeuwen, Bas., 2010. "English Economic Growth: 1270 - 1870," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 35, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
  7. Dietrich Vollrath, 2011. "The agricultural basis of comparative development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 343-370, December.
  8. Wilde, Joshua, 2012. "How substitutable are fixed factors in production? evidence from pre-industrial England," MPRA Paper 39278, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  9. Nico Voigtländer & Joachim Voth, 2008. "The three horsemen of riches: Plague, war and urbanization in early modern Europe," Economics Working Papers 1115, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jun 2012.

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