@techreport{Cinnirella2012Malthus,
abstract = {We question the received wisdom that birth limitation was absent among historical populations before the fertility transition of the late nineteenth-century. Using duration and panel models on family-level data, we find a causal, negative short-run effect of living standards on birth spacing in the three centuries preceding England's fertility transition. While the effect could be driven by biology in the case of the poor, a significant effect among the rich suggests that spacing worked as a control mechanism in pre-modern England. Our findings support the Malthusian preventive check hypothesis and rationalize England's historical leadership as a low population-pressure, high-wage economy.},
address = {M\"{u}nchen},
author = {Francesco Cinnirella and Marc P. B. Klemp and Jacob L. Weisdorf},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {J11; J13; N33; 330; spacing; birth intervals; fertility; limitation; natural fertility; preventive check; Familienplanung; Fruchtbarkeit; Lebensstandard; Sozialgeschichte; Gro\ss{}britannien},
language = {eng},
number = {3936},
publisher = {CESifo},
title = {Malthus in the bedroom: Birth spacing as a preventive check mechanism in pre-modern England},
type = {CESifo Working Paper: Economics of Education},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/64851},
year = {2012}
}
