Naming the Precious Child: New Evidence of Intentional Family Planning in Historical Populations

Abstract

Can the names parents gave their children give us insights into how parents in historical times planned their families? In this study, we explore whether the names given to the firstborn child can be used as indicators of family-size preferences and, if so, what this reveals about the emergence of intentional family planning over the course of the demographic transition. We analyze historical populations from 1850 to 1940 in the United States, where early fertility control and large sample sizes allow separate analyses of the White and Black populations. We also analyze Norway from 1800 to 1910, where there was a much later fertility transition. A split-sample method allows automated scoring of each name in terms of predicted family size. We find a strong relationship between naming and family size in the U.S. White population as early as 1850, for the Black population beginning in 1940, and for the Norwegian population in 1910. These results provide new evidence of the emergence of “conscious calculation” during the fertility transition. Our methods may also be applicable to modern high-fertility populations in the midst of fertility decline.

A data-driven approach shows that individuals' characteristics are more important than their networks in predicting fertility preferences

“…LASSO regression and cross-validation) to robustly derive which variables are most important in explaining fertility preferences, and we compare individual-level variables, compositional variables, and structural variables. Machine learning techniques in demography are still relatively rare [ 38 , 41 , 55 ], despite the tremendous potential they might have for the field [ 38 , 41 , 47 , 56 , 57 ].…”