Does Parental Education Affect Fertility? Evidence from Pre-Demographic Transition Prussia

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 casual.Demographic transition; female education; fertitility; Nineteenth Century Prussia