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Early Fertility Decline in the United States: Tests of Alternative Hypotheses Using New Complete-Count Census Microdata and Enhanced County-Level Data

J. David Hacker

Michael R. Haines

Matthew Jaremski

Research in Economic History

ISBN: 978-1-80071-880-7, eISBN: 978-1-80071-879-1

Publication date: 30 September 2021

Abstract

The US fertility transition in the nineteenth century is unusual. Not only did it start from a very high fertility level and very early in the nation’s development, but it also took place long before the nation’s mortality transition, industrialization, and urbanization. This paper assembles new county-level, household-level, and individual-level data, including new complete-count IPUMS microdata databases of the 1830–1880 censuses, to evaluate different theories for the nineteenth-century American fertility transition. We construct cross-sectional models of net fertility for currently-married white couples in census years 1830–1880 and test the results with a subset of couples linked between the 1850–1860, 1860–1870, and 1870–1880 censuses. We find evidence of marital fertility control consistent with hypotheses as early as 1830. The results indicate support for several different but complementary theories of the early US fertility decline, including the land availability, conventional structuralist, ideational, child demand/quality-quantity tradeoff, and life cycle savings theories.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Minnesota Population Center (P2CHD041023), funded through a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). We also wish to thank Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, and Myera Rashid, who published their census crosswalks online for public use. This project was also supported by a research grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01-HD082120-01Q3).

Citation

Hacker, J.D., Haines, M.R. and Jaremski, M. (2021), "Early Fertility Decline in the United States: Tests of Alternative Hypotheses Using New Complete-Count Census Microdata and Enhanced County-Level Data", Hanes, C. and Wolcott, S. (Ed.) Research in Economic History (Research in Economic History, Vol. 37), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 89-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0363-326820210000037003

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited