Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/46359 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 3430
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
While women's employment opportunities, relative wages, and the child quantity-quality trade-off have been studied as factors underlying historical fertility limitation, the role of parental education has received little attention. We combine Prussian county data from three censuses - 1816, 1849, and 1867 - to estimate the relationship between women's education and their fertility before the demographic transition. Despite controlling for several demand and supply factors, we find a negative residual effect of women's education on fertility. Instrumental-variable estimates, using exogenous variation in women's education driven by differences in landownership inequality, suggest that the effect of women's education on fertility is causal.
Subjects: 
demographic transition
female education
fertility
nineteenth century Prussia
JEL: 
N33
J13
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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