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

Abstract

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.

Exit, Voice, and Political Change: Evidence from Swedish Mass Migration to the United States

“…In addi- 58 OLS estimates, presented in table C.12, indicate a positive correlation. 59 The fact that fertility adapts quickly is in line with recent evidence from Sweden showing that a reduction in infant mortality in the early nineteenth century caused population levels to remain stable rather than increase, because of a rapid decrease in fertility (Ager, Worm Hansen, and Sandholt Jensen 2017). 60 Tables C.19-C.24 document that this relationship is present also in the OLS estimations.…”

Censorship, Family Planning, and the Historical Fertility Transition

“…Work on the role of female education and labor force opportunities, which may increase the cost of raising children, includes Schultz (1985), Crafts (1989), Galor & Weil (1996), Jensen (2012), Becker et al (2013), Diebolt & Perrin (2013) and Murphy (2015). Some have also examined the impact of mortality (Kalemli-Ozcan et al, 2000;Ager et al, 2018) and industrialization (Wanamaker, 2012;Franck & Galor, 2015). Additionally, there are a number of studies evaluating a range of potential determinants of the historical fertility transition in different settings, such as Dribe (2008) and Bengtsson & Dribe (2014) on Sweden and (Brown & Guinnane, 2002) on Bavaria.…”

Fertility and Labor Market Responses to Reductions in Mortality

“…Mortality declined more in states with higher baseline rates. We leverage these cross-cohort and cross-state patterns in a difference-in-difference strategy similar to that used in Acemoglu and Johnson (2007), Ager, Hansen, and Jensen (2017), Bleakley (2007), Bhalotra and Venkataramani (2015) and Gollin, Hansen, and Wingender (2021). 4 In contrast to our findings, the pill had no impact on completed fertility at either margin (Ananat and Hungerman 2012).…”