The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics

Thomas Baudin and David de la Croix

Working Papers from IESEG School of Management

Abstract: Reflect on the escape from a stagnant or Malthusian system. If this transformation is propelled by human capital, it should be spearheaded by individuals possessing elevated humancapital. To explore this hypothesis, we investigate the connection between family size and human capital among academics in Northern Europe in the two centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution. We gauge scholars’ human capital using a novel approach based on their publications. We find that scholars with a high number of publications shifted from having more siblings to having fewer than others during the first half of the 18th century. This shift is consistent with an evolutionary growth model in which the initial Malthusian constraint leads the high human capital families to reproduce more, before being endogenously substituted by a Beckerian constraint with a child quality-quantity tradeoff. Our results support an extension of the Galor and Moav (2002)’s approach, in which the decline of Malthusian constraints is linked to human capital accumulation during the 18th century.

Keywords: Universities; Academies; Fertility; Scholars; Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 N3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60
Date: 2024-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-evo, nep-gro and nep-his
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics (2024)
Working Paper: The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ies:wpaper:e202408

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