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Title: Industrialization and the 19th Century American Fertility Decline: Evidence from South Carolina

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2011

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Abstract: Economists have frequently hypothesized that industrialization and its correlates played a major role in fertility decline in the United States after 1850. I exploit the unique circumstances surrounding industrialization in South Carolina between 1880 and 1900 to show that fertility rates were negatively impacted by the arrival of textile mills. Using cross-section data on rural locations in South Carolina, I show that textile mill arrival was associated with a signi?cant reduction in fertility by 1900. A falsi?cation test shows that these patterns did not hold in the pre-industrialization period, and a di?erence-in- di?erence analysis estimates fertility reduction at 6-10%. Controlling for migration, it appears that the in-migration of low-fertility households is responsible for most of the observed decline. Higher rates of textile employment and child mortality for migrant females can explain part of the result, and I conjecture that an increase in child-raising costs induced by the separation of migrant households from their extended families may explain the remaining gap in migrant-native fertility.

Url: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/48e6/4f7c9c612307f5cbd0c84cc1c5457a4e19a9.pdf

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Authors: Wanamaker, Marianne, H

Publisher: Department of Economics, College of Business Administration The University of Tennessee

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Fertility and Mortality

Countries: United States