Fertility and Modernity

Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg

No 7745, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We investigate the determinants of the fertility decline in Europe from 1830 to 1970 using a newly constructed dataset of linguistic distances between European regions. We find that the fertility decline resulted from a gradual diffusion of new fertility behavior from French-speaking regions to the rest of Europe. We observe that societies with higher education, lower infant mortality, higher urbanization, and higher population density had lower levels of fertility during the 19th and early 20th century. However, the fertility decline took place earlier and was initially larger in communities that were culturally closer to the French, while the fertility transition spread only later to societies that were more distant from the cultural frontier. This is consistent with a process of social influence, whereby societies that were linguistically and culturally closer to the French faced lower barriers to the adoption of new social norms and attitudes towards fertility control.

Keywords: fertility control; diffusion; social norms; cultural barriers; demographic transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J10 J13 N00 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-evo, nep-gro and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Fertility and Modernity (2022)
Working Paper: Fertility and Modernity (2019)
Working Paper: Fertility and Modernity (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7745

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