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Marital Fertility and Investment in Children’s Education

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Cliometrics of the Family

Part of the book series: Studies in Economic History ((SEH))

Abstract

This chapter reviews recent literature in economics and economic history on the relationship between parental investments in children’s education and fertility. It surveys studies on fertility patterns in pre-transition economies as well as economies undergoing the process of demographic transition. This chapter focuses on the empirical challenges related to the identification of causal effects. Finally, it provides novel descriptive evidence on the relationship between investments in early childhood education and fertility in 1864 Prussia.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Dennison and Ogilvie (2014) for a critique of the causal effect of the EMP on economic growth.

  2. 2.

    Throughout this chapter the terms “education” and “human capital” will be used interchangeably.

  3. 3.

    For a slightly older review of the literature on the economic explanations for the historical fertility transition, you are referred to Guinnane (2011).

  4. 4.

    See also Galor (2012) for a review of the different theories of the demographic transitions and of their testable predictions.

  5. 5.

    The concept of natural fertility implies the absence of parity-dependent birth control (Henry 1967).

  6. 6.

    The conclusions of the EFP supported the view that the fertility transition was due to the diffusion of new cultural norms which made acceptable parity-specific birth control. This point will be discussed more in detail in Sect. 3.4.2.

  7. 7.

    For more details see Section 4 in Fernihough (2017).

  8. 8.

    Studies providing evidence for the cultural diffusion hypothesis are discussed in Sect. 3.4.2.

  9. 9.

    By 1877, 20 kindergarten teacher training institutes had been established (Bauernschuster and Falck 2015).

  10. 10.

    This is in stark contrast with the kindergarten movement in the United States where kindergarten was fully integrated into the public school system. By 1914 most major cities in the United States had public kindergarten systems.

  11. 11.

    Königliches Statistisches Bureau in Berlin (1867).

  12. 12.

    It is important to note that, in the original sources in 1864, kindergarten is still called “Bewahranstalten.” The data on kindergarten collected by the census on kindergarten probably contain different types of kindergarten, including the Froebelian ones.

  13. 13.

    We use the county borders in force in 1849, i.e., our analysis is based on 335 counties.

  14. 14.

    Information on employment in industry and in agriculture and municipal tax revenues p. c. refer to 1867. The data used for this analysis come from the ifo Prussian Economic History Database (iPEHD). See Becker et al. (2014) for more details.

  15. 15.

    Note that the variables for public and private schools per capita include also secondary schools.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business and Economics and Danish Institute for Advanced Study, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Francesco Cinnirella

  2. Ifo Institute, Munich, Germany

    Francesco Cinnirella

  3. CESifo, Munich, Germany

    Francesco Cinnirella

  4. CEPR, London, UK

    Francesco Cinnirella

  5. CAGE, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Francesco Cinnirella

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  1. Francesco Cinnirella
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Correspondence to Francesco Cinnirella .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. BETA/CNRS, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    Claude Diebolt

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Auke Rijpma , Sarah Carmichael , Selin Dilli  & Charlotte Störmer , ,  & 

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Cinnirella, F. (2019). Marital Fertility and Investment in Children’s Education. In: Diebolt, C., Rijpma, A., Carmichael, S., Dilli, S., Störmer, C. (eds) Cliometrics of the Family. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99480-2_3

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