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Fecundity, Fertility and The Formation of Human Capital

Year: 2018

Type: article

Abstract: Exploiting a genealogy of English individuals living in the 16th to the 19th centuries, this study shows that lower parental reproductive capacity positively affected the socio-economic achievements of offspring.Using the time interval between the date of marriage and the first birth as a measure of reproductive capacity, we find that parental fecundity positively affected the number of siblings and that children of parents with lower fecundity were more likely to become literate and employed in skilled and high-income professions.This suggests there was a trade-off between child quantity and quality in England during the industrial revolution, supporting leading theories of the origins of modern economic growth.Falling fertility rates and rising levels of human capital are central features of the centuries-long historical transition from economic stagnation to modern economic growth.Long-run growth theories have placed the trade-off between child quantity and child quality at the heart of this transition, arguing that technological progress incentivised parents to increase investment in their children's human capital by giving birth to fewer children (Galor and Weil, 2000; Galor, 2011). 1 Studies based on contemporary populations and inventive empirical strategies have generally not found clear-cut

Source: The Economic Journal

DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12589

Authors: Marc Klemp, Jacob Weisdorf

Institutions: University of Copenhagen, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Harvard University, Brown University, University of Southern Denmark

Language: English

Topic: Historical Economic and Social Studies

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,463