Chronic Disease Burden and the Interaction of Education, Fertility, and Growth

Bleakley, Hoyt; Lange, Fabian

doi:10.1162/rest.91.1.52

Cited by 176 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(31 reference statements)

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“…Historical analyses of the trade-off have been conducted by Bleakley and Lange (2009) on the American South in 1910 and by Becker et al (2010a) on Prussia in 1849.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of investment in children’s education on fertility in 1816 Prussia

2011

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The interaction between investment in children's education and parental fertility is crucial in recent theories of the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern economic growth. This paper contributes to the literature on the child quantity-quality trade-off with new county-level evidence for Prussia in 1816, several decades before the demographic transition. We find a significant negative causal effect of education on fertility, which is robust to accounting for spatial autocorrelation. The causal effect of education is identified through exogenous variation in enrollment rates due to differences in landownership inequality. A comparison with estimates for 1849 suggests that the preference for quality relative to quantity might have increased during the first half of the nineteenth century.JEL Classification: N33, I20, J13

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“…Historical analyses of the trade-off have been conducted by Bleakley and Lange (2009) on the American South in 1910 and by Becker et al (2010a) on Prussia in 1849.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of investment in children’s education on fertility in 1816 Prussia

2011

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“…The construction of the proposed utility function in equation (1) implies that the household receives utility from surviving children, and that the marginal utility from born children is increasing in the survival rate. 8 The household is confronted with the following budget constraint:…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Fertility and Early-Life Mortality: Evidence from Smallpox Vaccination in Sweden

Ager

Hansen

Jensen

2017

Journal of the European Economic Association

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We examine how the introduction of smallpox vaccination a¤ected early-life mortality and fertility in Sweden during the …rst half of the 19th century. We demonstrate that parishes in counties with higher levels of smallpox mortality prior to the introduction of vaccination experienced a greater decline in infant mortality afterwards. Exploiting this …nding in an instrumental-variable approach reveals that this decline had a negative e¤ect on the birth rate, while the number of surviving children and population growth remained una¤ected.These results suggest that the decline in early-life mortality cannot account for the onset of the fertility decline in Sweden.

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“…In contrast, a decrease in the child mortality rate due to lower case fatality elicits a weak TFR response and the NFR increases despite fertility falling. 13 Next consider the quantity-quality tradeoff. Quality investment in either type of child is increasing in √ t .…”

Section: The Effect Of Mortalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the next generation, however, less healthy (healthier) adults will have more (fewer) children in response to their lower (greater) longevity, ¡ t . Hence the overall NFR 13 A lower prevalence or case fatality rate means fewer sickly children and, ceteris paribus, less time raising a given number of children. Assumption A1 is a robustness check to show that as long as unhealthy children do not require too much parental time commitment, total and net fertility rates behave this way when child mortality falls.…”

Section: The Effect Of Mortalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mortality versus morbidity in the demographic transition

Aksan

Chakraborty

2014

European Economic Review

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The link between the mortality and epidemiological transitions is used to identify the effect of the former on the fertility transition: a mortality transition that is not accompanied by improving morbidity causes slower demographic and economic change. In a model where children may die from infectious disease, childhood health affects human capital and noninfectious-disease-related adult mortality. When child mortality falls from lower prevalence, as it did in western Europe, labor productivity improves, fertility falls and the economy prospers. When it falls mainly from better cures, as it has in sub-Saharan Africa, survivors are less healthy and there is little economic growth. The model can quantitatively explain sub-Saharan Africa's experience. More generally it shows that the commonly used indicator, life expectancy at birth, is a poor predictor of population health and economic growth unless morbidity falls with mortality.

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Chronic Disease Burden and the Interaction of Education, Fertility, and Growth

Cited by 176 publications

References 39 publications

The effect of investment in children’s education on fertility in 1816 Prussia

The effect of investment in children’s education on fertility in 1816 Prussia

Fertility and Early-Life Mortality: Evidence from Smallpox Vaccination in Sweden

Mortality versus morbidity in the demographic transition

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