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ifo Institut – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München >
CESifo Working Papers, CESifo Group Munich >
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http://hdl.handle.net/10419/64851
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| Title: | | Malthus in the bedroom: Birth spacing as a preventive check mechanism in pre-modern England  |
| Authors: | | Cinnirella, Francesco Klemp, Marc P. B. Weisdorf, Jacob L. |
| Issue Date: | | 2012 |
| Series/Report no.: | | CESifo Working Paper: Economics of Education 3936 |
| 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. |
| Subjects: | | spacing birth intervals fertility limitation natural fertility preventive check |
| JEL: | | J11 J13 N33 |
| Document Type: | | Working Paper |
| Appears in Collections: | | CESifo Working Papers, CESifo Group Munich
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