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Title: Revolution in Fertility, Schooling and Women's Work, 1875-1940: Assessing Proposed Explanations
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2011
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Abstract: The era between the Civil War and WWII was one of revolutionary change within the American family. Family size continued its long-term decline and by the 1930s fertility was not much above contemporary levels (later rising during the baby boom). The schooling of older children expanded tremendously, as epitomized by the "high school movement." Additionally, the proportion of marriedfemales' adulthood devoted to market-oriented activities increased, even as market-oriented activity performed at home declined. Horrific rates of infant and child mortality declined dramatically (with more gradual gains since). Thus, this interval contained the emergence of many important features of contemporary families. This paper considers these trends jointly through calibration of successive generations of representative husband and wife households who choose the quantity and quality of children, household production, and the extent of mother's involvement in market-oriented production. One important contribution is that standard explanations such as rising wages, declining mortality, skill-biased technological change, curriculum improvements during the high school movement, reductions in morbidity, and reduced time costs of children cannot in combination reduce fertility to observed levels or increase stocks of human capital to levels seen to be necessary by the calibrations. Instead, a rising relative preference for child quality over quantity is also required, leading to an increased share of potential family income devoted to child education, child consumption and an increase in time mother's investments in child quality. A second significant contribution is the gathering of information and strategies employed to present reasonable quantitative depictions of the behavior of cohorts over an interval in which significant data limitations are pervasive.
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Authors: Viaroux, Christelle; Cinyabuguma, Matthias; Lord, William
Publisher: University of Maryland - Baltimore County
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education, Family and Marriage, Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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