Gender empowerment as an enforcer of individuals’ choice between education and fertility: evidence from 19th century France

Abstract

Recent theoretical developments in growth models, triggered particularly by unified theories of growth, suggest that the child quantity-quality trade-off is a defining element in our explanation of a transition from Malthusian stagnation to a sustained growth path. This paper presents a model and derive a testable empirical framework to investigate the role of gender on the trade-off between education and fertility for 86 French counties during the 19th century. Endogeneity-mitigated mean- and median-based regressions offer robust empirical predictions for gender-empowered quality-quantity trade-off. In particular, we find the existence of a significant and negative association between education and fertility. Further, while gauging the effect of schooling on fertility, the short-run differences between male and female appear to be small whilst the long-run effects are large. From policy perspective, our results imply that it matters not just that parents educate their children, but specifically that they choose to educate girls.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Tapas Mishra: orcid.org/0000-0002-6902-2326

Catalogue record

Export record