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Did Gender-Bias Matter in the Quantity-Quality Trade-off in 19th Century France?

Diebolt, Claude ; Mishra, Tapas and Perrin, Faustine LU (2015) In Lund Papers in Economic History. Population Economics
Abstract
Recent theoretical developments of growth models, especially on unified theories of growth, suggest that the child quantity-quality trade-off has been a central element of the transition from Malthusian stagnation to sustained growth. Using an original censusbased dataset, this paper explores the role of gender on the trade-off between education and fertility across 86 French counties during the nineteenth century, as an empirical extension of Diebolt-Perrin (2013). We first test the existence of the child quantity-quality

trade-off in 1851. Second, we explore the long-run effect of education on fertility from a gendered approach. Two important results emerge: (i) significant and negative association between education and... (More)
Recent theoretical developments of growth models, especially on unified theories of growth, suggest that the child quantity-quality trade-off has been a central element of the transition from Malthusian stagnation to sustained growth. Using an original censusbased dataset, this paper explores the role of gender on the trade-off between education and fertility across 86 French counties during the nineteenth century, as an empirical extension of Diebolt-Perrin (2013). We first test the existence of the child quantity-quality

trade-off in 1851. Second, we explore the long-run effect of education on fertility from a gendered approach. Two important results emerge: (i) significant and negative association between education and fertility is found, and (ii) such a relationship is non-unique over the

distribution of education/fertility. While our results suggest the existence of a negative and significant effect of the female endowments in human capital on the fertility transition, the effects of negative endowment almost disappear at low level of fertility. (Less)
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author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Working paper/Preprint
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Cliometrics, Education, Fertility, Demographic Transition, Unified growth theory, Nineteenth century France
in
Lund Papers in Economic History. Population Economics
issue
141
pages
56 pages
publisher
Department of Economics, Lund University
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
8b8f4007-45fc-4825-bda1-f1a0037b886e (old id 8310071)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 10:54:57
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:01:32
@misc{8b8f4007-45fc-4825-bda1-f1a0037b886e,
  abstract     = {{Recent theoretical developments of growth models, especially on unified theories of growth, suggest that the child quantity-quality trade-off has been a central element of the transition from Malthusian stagnation to sustained growth. Using an original censusbased dataset, this paper explores the role of gender on the trade-off between education and fertility across 86 French counties during the nineteenth century, as an empirical extension of Diebolt-Perrin (2013). We first test the existence of the child quantity-quality<br/><br>
trade-off in 1851. Second, we explore the long-run effect of education on fertility from a gendered approach. Two important results emerge: (i) significant and negative association between education and fertility is found, and (ii) such a relationship is non-unique over the<br/><br>
distribution of education/fertility. While our results suggest the existence of a negative and significant effect of the female endowments in human capital on the fertility transition, the effects of negative endowment almost disappear at low level of fertility.}},
  author       = {{Diebolt, Claude and Mishra, Tapas and Perrin, Faustine}},
  keywords     = {{Cliometrics; Education; Fertility; Demographic Transition; Unified growth theory; Nineteenth century France}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Working Paper}},
  number       = {{141}},
  publisher    = {{Department of Economics, Lund University}},
  series       = {{Lund Papers in Economic History. Population Economics}},
  title        = {{Did Gender-Bias Matter in the Quantity-Quality Trade-off in 19th Century France?}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5651533/8310072.pdf}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}