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Revolutionary Transition: Inheritance Changeand Fertility Decline

Author

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  • Victor Gay
  • Paula Eugenia Gobbi
  • Marc Goñi
Abstract
We test Le Play’s (1875) hypothesis that the French Revolution contributed to France’s early fertility decline. In 1793, a series of inheritance reforms abolished local inheritance practices, imposing equal partition of assets among all children. We develop a theoretical framework that predicts a decline in fertility following these reforms because of indivisibility constraints in parents’ assets. We test this hypothesis by combining a newly created map of pre-Revolution local inheritance practices together with demographic data from the Henry database and from rowdsourced geneaologies in Geni.com. We provide difference-in-differences and regressiondiscontinuity estimates based on comparing cohorts of fertile age and cohorts too old to be fertile in 1793 between municipalities where the reforms altered and did not alter existing inheritance practices. We find that the 1793 inheritance reforms reduced completed fertility by half to one child, closed the pre-reform fertility gap between different inheritance regions, and sharply accelerated France’s early fertility transition.

Suggested Citation

  • Victor Gay & Paula Eugenia Gobbi & Marc Goñi, 2023. "Revolutionary Transition: Inheritance Changeand Fertility Decline," Working Papers ECARES 2023-20, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/365273
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ridolfi, Leonardo, 2019. "Six Centuries of Real Wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III: 1250–1860," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(3), pages 589-627, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Gay, Victor & Gobbi, Paula E. & Goñi, Marc, 2024. "The Customary Atlas of Ancien Régime France," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. Colasurdo, Andrea & Omenti, Riccardo, 2024. "Using Online Genealogical Data for Demographic Research: An Empirical Examination of the FamiLinx Database," SocArXiv 62yxm, Center for Open Science.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Demographic transition; Fertility; French Revolution; Inheritance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

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