Sascha O. Becker|Francesco Cinnirella|Ludger Woessmann
The trade-off between fertility and education: evidence from before the demographic transition
University of Warwick|Ifo Institute for Economic Research|Ifo Institute for Economic Research
tradeoff child quantity quality crucial ingredient unified growth models explain transition malthusian stagnation modern growth present first evidence tradeoff indeed existed already nineteenth century exploiting unique censusbased dataset 334 prussian counties 1849 furthermore find causation fertility education runs ways based separate instrumentalvariable models instrument fertility sex ratios education landownership inequality distance wittenberg education 1849 also predicts fertility transition 18801905