Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching

We assemble a novel dataset to study the impact of male scarcity on marital assortative matching and other marriage market outcomes using the large shock that WWI caused to the number of French men. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that post war in regions with higher mortality rates: men were less likely to marry women of lower social classes; men were more likely and women less likely to marry; out-of-wedlock births increased; divorce rates decreased; and the age gap decreased. These findings are consistent with men improving their position in the marriage market as they become scarcer.

The Welfare of Children During the Great Depression

This paper examines the impact of New Deal relief programs on demographic outcomes in major U.S. cities during the 1930s. A five-equation structural model is estimated that tests the effect of the relief spending on infant mortality, non-infant mortality, and fertility. For 111 cities for which data on relief spending during the 1930s were available, we collected annual data that matched the relief spending to the demographic variables, socioeconomic descriptions of the cities, and retail sales, which serve as a proxy for the level of economic activity. Relief spending directly lowered infant mortality rates to the degree that changes in relief spending can explain nearly one-third of the decline in infant mortality during the 1930s. Relief spending also raised general fertility rates. Our estimates suggest that the cost of saving an infant life during this period ranged from $2 to 4.5 million dollars (measured in year 2000 dollars). This range is similar to that found in modern studies of the effect of Medicaid and is within the range of market values of human life.

Births, Deaths, and New Deal Relief during the Great Depression

This paper examines the impact of New Deal relief programs on infant mortality, noninfant mortality and general fertility rates in major U.S. cities between 1929 and 1940. We estimate the effects using a variety of specifications and techniques for a panel of 114 cities for which data on relief spending during the 1930s were available. The significant rise in relief spending during the New Deal contributed to reductions in infant mortality, suicide rates, and some other causes of death, while contributing to increases in the general fertility rate. Estimates of the relationship between economic activity and death rates suggest that many types of death rates were pro-cyclical, similar to Ruhm's (2000) findings for the modern U.S.. Estimates of the relief costs associated with saving a life (adjusted for inflation) are similar to estimates found in studies of modern social insurance programs.

Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 54, Number 3

POPULATION STRUCTURE IN HISPANIC ST. AUGUSTINE, 1629-1763 Theodore G. Corbett MADISON COUNTY’S SEA ISLAND COTTON INDUSTRY, 1870-1916 Clifton Paisley THEODORE ROOSEVELT ENTERTAINS BOOKER T. WASHINGTON: FLORIDA’S REACTION TO THE WHITE HOUSE DINNER John K. Severn and William Warren Rogers FORT FOSTER: A SECOND SEMINOLE WAR FORT Michael G. Schene NOTES AND DOCUMENTS CIVIL WAR LETTERS OF COLONEL DAVID LANG Bertram H. Groene FLORIDA HISTORY RESEARCH IN PROGRESS BOOK REVIEWSBOOK NOTES HISTORY NEW

The Historical Fertility Transition: A Guide for Economists

The historical fertility transition is the process by which much of Europe and North America went from high to low fertility in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This transformation is central to recent accounts of long-run economic growth. Prior to the transition, women bore as many as eight children each, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes was positive. Today, many women have no children at all, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes is zero or even negative. This paper discusses the large literature on the historical fertility transition, focusing on what we do and do not know about the process. I stress some possible misunderstandings of the demographic literature, and discuss an agenda for future work.fertility transition, long-run growth, Malthusian models, quantity-quality trade-off

The Journal of the Friends' Historical Society vol. 3 No. 1

1. Notices. 2. Notes and Queries. 3. Irish Quaker Records I. 4. Friends on the Atlantic III. 5. Disused Burial Grounds in South Yorkshire. 6. Honest Margret. 7. Words of Sympathy for New England Sufferers. 8. Extracts from the Bishop of Chester's Visitation, 1665 III. 9. John Woolman to Jane Crossfield. 10. Stephen Grellet at Chelmsford, Essex. 11. Petition to the Commissioners from the Vestry of Newcastle, Pa. 12. Aylesbury Gaol, Bucks. 13. Friends in Current Literature. 14. Friends' Reference Library, Devonshire House

The Journal of the Friends' Historical Society vol. 1 No. 2

1. Notices 2. Notes and Queries 3. Account of the Illness and Death of George Fox 4. Daniel Quare 5. The Wilkinson-Story Controversy in Reading 6. The Handwriting of George Fox 7. Our Recording Clerks: II - Richard Richardson 8. Notes on Friends in the South of Scotland 9. The Quaker Family of Owne II 10. An Appeal from Ireland 11. Gleanings from Original REgisters at Somerset House 12. Book Notes 13. Friends' Reference Library 14. Second List of Member

Outliving Love: Marital Estrangement in an African Insurance Market

Marital estrangement and formal divorce are vital conjunctures for married women’s kinship relations and life course, where a horizon of future possibilities are revalued and negotiated at the interstices of custom, law, and social and ritual obligations. In this article, after delineating the forms of customary and civil marriage and the possibilities for divorce or estrangement from each, I describe how some married women in Swaziland and South Africa mediate this complex social field for their children and families through pensions and continuing to pay for their partners’ insurance coverage. This was not solely out of avarice to reap future benefits as spouses. Rather, in a context of patriarchal relations, gender-based violence and economic dispossession, women seek to maintain potential financial grounds through insurance resources, acknowledge their children’s paternity, and fulfil enduring obligations to in-laws by partially contributing to the eventual funerals of their spouses and kin