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Railways and the European fertility
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Ciccarelli, Carlo, Fenske, James and Henneberg, Jordi Martí (2023) Railways and the European fertility. Working Paper. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS), 1477 . (Unpublished)
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Official URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w...
Abstract
We show that the spread of the railway network slowed the decline of fertilityin Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We construct novel data on market access across sub-national regions in Europe and use both a panel fixed effects approach and an instrumental variables strategy that leverages variation in market access stemming from access to distant markets. We find that greater market access predicts higher fertility, with a standardized magnitude of 0.14. Consistent with an interpretation that market access increased fertility by raising incomes relative to the returns to child quality and the opportunity cost of childbearing, we show that our results are driven by locations that achieved higher levels of income per capita despite lagging in human capital and female labor force participation.
Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Railroad trains, Fertility, Human -- Europe, Demographic transition, Economic development, Railroads -- Social aspects | ||||||
Series Name: | Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) | ||||||
Publisher: | University of Warwick. Department of Economics | ||||||
Place of Publication: | Coventry, UK | ||||||
ISSN: | 2059-4283 | ||||||
Official Date: | October 2023 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 1477 | ||||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||||
Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Free Access (unspecified licence, 'bronze OA') | ||||||
Description: | This paper also appears as CAGE Discussion paper 686 |
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Open Access Version: |
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