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Malthus in the bedroom : birth spacing as a preventive check mechanism in pre-modern England
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Cinnirella, Francesco , Klemp, Marc P. B. and Weisdorf, Jacob L. (2013) Malthus in the bedroom : birth spacing as a preventive check mechanism in pre-modern England. Working Paper. Coventry, UK: Department of Economics, University of Warwick. CAGE Online Working Paper Series, Volume 2013 (Number 174).
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Abstract
The role of demography in long-run economic growth has been subject to increasing attention.
This paper questions the received wisdom that marital birth control was absent before the
nineteenth century. Using an extensive individual-level dataset covering 270,000 births from
80,000 families we show that higher national and sector-specific real wages reduced spacing
between births in England over more than three centuries, from 1540-1850. This effect is present
among both poor and rich families and is robust to a wide range of control variables accounting
for external factors influencing a couple’s fertility such as malnutrition, climate shocks and the
disease environment.
Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) |
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Alternative Title: | |
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman |
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics |
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Industrial revolution -- Great Britain -- History, Fertility, Human -- Great Britain, Demography -- Great Britain, Population -- Economic aspects |
Series Name: | CAGE Online Working Paper Series |
Publisher: | Department of Economics, University of Warwick |
Place of Publication: | Coventry, UK |
Official Date: | October 2013 |
Volume: | Volume 2013 |
Number: | Number 174 |
Number of Pages: | 35 |
Status: | Not Peer Reviewed |
Publication Status: | Published |
Funder: | European Research Council (ERC), Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz |
Grant number: | 240928 (ERC) |
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