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Title: The Effect of Child Labor Restrictions on Fertility: Evidence From the Early 20th Century
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2018
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Abstract: This chapter investigates whether child labor restrictions imposed by compulsory schooling laws and child labor regulation have an impact on fertility. Exploiting variation induced by changes in legislation across time and between states during the early 20th century U.S, I nd that parents chose to have less children as a response to the constraints imposed on the labor supply of their prospective children, and that the largest response was among parents whose children were more likely to work. I address possible threats to the validity of the identication strategy, and show that the results are robust to various robustness checks. My results suggest that legislation aimed at increasing children's educational attainment and decreasing the prevalence of child labor has spillover eects on parents' fertility, providing additional empirical support to the notion that nancial incentives play a role in determining household fertility decisions.
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Authors: Shanan, Yannay
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Fertility and Mortality, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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