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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Pascaline Dupas (Princeton University); Seema Jayachandran (Princeton University); Adriana Lleras-Muney (UCLA); Pauline Rossi (Ecole Polytechnique) |
| Abstract: | We conducted a randomized trial among 14, 545 households in rural Burkina Faso to test the oft-cited hypothesis that limited access to contraception is an important driver of high fertility rates in West Africa. We do not find support for this hypothesis. Women who were given free access to medical contraception for three years did not have lower birth rates; we can reject even modest effects. We cross-randomized additional interventions to address possible inefficiencies leading to low demand for free contraception, specifically misperceptions about the child mortality rate, limited exposure to opposing views about family size and contraception, and social pressure. Free contraception did not influence fertility even in combination with these other interventions. |
| Keywords: | Burkina Faso, Family planning; Demographic transition; Social norms; Randomized trial |
| JEL: | J13 J18 O12 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:327 |
| By: | Horrell, Sara; Humphries, Jane; Weisdorf, Jacob |
| Abstract: | E. A. Wrigley identified the responsiveness of nuptiality and marital fertility to changes in male wages. Others have theorized the importance of women's decision‐making in the timing of marriage, but without much empirical evidence. Combining new long‐run series of annual wages for men, for married and single women, and for children with existing demographic data, the influence of women and children's remuneration on household formation is investigated. Women played a key role in the functioning of early modern preventive checks. High wages encouraged single women to delay marriage, reducing marital fertility. This counterbalanced the encouragement of nuptiality stimulated by high male earnings, which helped balance population and economic growth. Juvenile earnings had little influence on family formation, challenging links suggested in accounts of protoindustrialization or proletarianization. Demographic evidence suggests that economic circumstances contributed to the timing of medieval marriage, but poverty more often than prosperity prompted celibacy. |
| Keywords: | work and pay; Britain; long-run; marriage patterns; fertility decisions; feminist economics |
| JEL: | N33 |
| Date: | 2024–09–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:120527 |
| By: | Hamid Noghanibehambari; Jason Fletcher |
| Abstract: | Previous studies document the potential links between early-life insults and life-cycle outcomes. However, fewer studies examine the effects of local labor market shocks during early-life on old-age male mortality. This article empirically investigates this link using a large-scale deindustrialization as a source of shocks to local labor markets: the decline in the New England’s textile industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Consistent with prior studies, we find small impacts on migration and changes in sociodemographic composition of counties post-deindustrialization. Using Social Security Administration death records linked with historical censuses 1900-1940 and difference-in-difference event studies, we find reductions in longevity for those born in highly-exposed counties whose families are categorized as non-migrants and those residing in non-urban areas. The results suggest intent-to-treat effects of about 3.3 months while the treatment-on-treated calculations suggest reductions of about 4 years in longevity of children of affected families. Using 1950-1960 census data, we find that those born in highly-exposed counties post-deindustrialization reveal large reductions in schooling, decreases in high school completion, and significant decreases in measures of socioeconomic standing. We further discuss the policy implication of these findings. |
| JEL: | I1 I15 J1 N30 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33039 |