“Decessit sine prole” – Childlessness, Celibacy, and Survival of the Richest in Pre-Industrial England David de la Croix 1 Eric Schneider 2 Jacob Weisdorf 3 1 Université catholique de Louvain 2 London School of Economics 3 University of Southern Denmark March 22, 2017
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion What we do There are two main demographic explanations of the Rise of the West ◮ European Marriage Pattern ◮ Evolutionary Advantage of the Rich We assess the reality of their demographic features on English pre-industrial data (family reconstitution data) Our contribution with respect to the literature: take all margins of fertility into account, including celibacy and childlessness 2 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion European Marriage Pattern Hajnal (1965) line from Saint Pe- tersburg to Trieste. To the west of the line, late mar- riage, high celibacy rates → strong Malthusian preventive check → higher income per person + girls’ power (De Moor and Van Zanden 2010.) Was Hajnal’s Western Europe marriage pattern instrumental to its economic success? disputed: Voigländer and Voth (AER 2013) against Dennison and Ogilvie (JEH 2014) 3 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion European Marriage Pattern and Preventive Check from Clark’s book A Farewell to Alms , Princeton, 2007 4 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Evolutionary Advantage of the Rich In sum: the rich enjoyed higher fitness than the rest and their “capitalistic attitudes” spread as a result Galor and Moav (QJE 2002): Take-off to modern growth can be explained by an increase in the proportion of people in the population preferring quality (of children) over quantity For their proportion to increase, need for an evolutionary advantage Clark and Hamilton (JEH 2006): a rich father had 40% more kids than a poor one (2250 testators in England, c. 1600) same holds using Cambridge Group data (Boberg-Fazlic, Sharp, and Weisdorf. EREH, 2011) → the “capitalist” values spread through English society prior to the Industrial Revolution 5 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Theory Purpose: analyze main components of net reproduction rate n ( c ) . Following Baudin, de la Croix and Gobbi (2016), we use the following decomposition: n ( c ) = m ( c ) ( 1 − z ( c )) b ( c ) ( 1 − d ( c )) (1) c : social class, m ( · ) : marriage rate, z ( · ) : fraction of childless married women, b ( · ) : number of birth conditionally on having children, d ( · ) : infant mortality rate. (assumes singles do not have children, and fully homogamous marriage) 6 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion European Marriage Pattern with all Margins age 45 adult mortality childlessness celibacy child mortality 1 − m ( c ) d ( c ) z ( c ) birth b ( c ) delaying marriage 15 0% 100% % women 7 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion New Margins Literature focuses on the intensive margin: b ( c ) ( 1 − d ( c )) and usually ( 1 − d ( c )) b ′ ( c ) − b ( c ) d ′ ( c ) > 0 i.e. evolutionary advantage to the high social class Does it still hold when all margins are accounted for ? n ′ ( c ) = ( 1 − z ( c )) b ( c )( 1 − d ( c )) m ′ ( c ) − m ( c ) b ( c )( 1 − d ( c )) z ′ ( c ) � �� � � �� � marriage margin childlessness margin � �� � Extensive margins of fertility + m ( c )( 1 − z ( c )) (( 1 − d ( c )) b ′ ( c ) − b ( c ) d ′ ( c )) . � �� � intensive margin of fertility one needs to estimate z ( c ) , m ( c ) , b ( c ) and d ( c ) from data. 8 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Parish registers Parish registers were formally introduced in England on 5 September 1538 following the split with Rome Injunction requiring the registers of baptisms, marriages and burials to be kept Civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths for England and Wales began on 1 July 1837 9 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Family reconstitution data Collected by the Cambridge Group for History of Population and Social Structure , the full set of family reconstitution data includes over 300,000 individuals recorded in registers coming from a total of 26 provincial, English parishes. These parishes were chosen by the Cambridge Group because of the high quality of data. The full data cover 1541 to 1871 We take a subsample restricted to the reliable period (parish specific) 10 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Parish of Banbury 1766 Elizabeth burial 1768 Elizabeth Treadwell 1733 1770 bapt. wife 1 bur. wife 1 1766 marriage Inn Holder burial 1808 1770 Printer ? John Cheney marriage Victualler 1802 bur. wife 2 o l l s N i c h h b e t l i z a ? E 1771 burial 1772 John 1773 ? John mar. 1794 In 1967 the renowned business family of 1775 Cheney decided to mark 200 years of ? Inn Keeper Elizabeth Ann printing in Banbury by publishing a book to celebrate this remarkable milestone. 1777 Sarah burial 1777 The story begins at the Unicorn where 1778 the first John Cheney was both printer burial 1780 Ann and publican. 1782 Johns time at the Unicorn ended in 1788 Thomas mar 1812 burial 1820 when he moved the printing business to a shop in Red Lion Street. 1786 burial 1786 William 11 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Occupations Use Clark and Cummins (Jpop 2015) classification 1 Labourers/Servants incl. seamen 2 Husbandmen small farmers, weavers 3 Craftsmen tailors, carpenters 4 Traders innkeepers, butchers, bakers 5 Farmers 6 Merchants/Professionals clerks, medical, printers 7 Gentry gentlemen, esquire 0 Unknown Observed from baptism registers (occupation of father), marriage, burial. 12 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Occupations (2) 9 per cent of the father’s occupations changed over life cycle. Assign maximum social group if reasonable. Assign unknown otherwise. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 17666 1087 624 330 187 229 37 87.6% 5.4% 3.1% 1.6% 0.9% 1.1% 0.2% 2 0 11827 463 168 230 139 28 92.0% 3.6% 1.3% 1.8% 1.1% 0.2% 3 0 0 14440 368 38 236 43 95.5% 2.4% 0.3% 1.6% 0.3% 4 0 0 0 7904 129 578 96 90.8% 1.5% 6.6% 1.1% 5 0 0 0 0 3528 78 91 95.4% 2.1% 2.5% 6 0 0 0 0 0 3516 232 93.8% 6.2% 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 1581 100% Max occupation × Min occupation 13 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Methodological contribution The standard in the literature is to estimate fertility with a restricted sample of women surviving past age 40 or 50 Problem is not only that many observations are lost, but also the contributions to fertility of those with lower survival times are dismissed. To overcome this, we propose Cox proportional hazards models for censored data (early death) to compute the predicted fertility rates from the corresponding survival curves. 14 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Marriage Rate m ( c ) - Sample - Cox proportional hazard model estimating the risk of marriage of the female population aged 16+ - Right censoring of participants (death). Cox allows to use the information from those who died early. - Sample of 8,611 individuals. Mean age at death is 46.09 years. Marriage rate: 58.6% - Requirement: observe birth and death in the parish (no permanent migration) - Married = either married in the parish or child baptized in the parish 15 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Marriage Rate m ( c ) - Method - Period is divided in four subperiods of equal length → time dummies (fct. marriage date of parents) - Inclusion of 26 parish dummies - Reference category: Labourers in parish 1, first subperiod - Cox implies the baseline hazard rate (the risk of getting married) is shifted proportionally by the occupation of the father 16 / 40
Introduction Theory Data Measuring the Four Margins Net reproduction Selection Implications Conclusion Descriptive stat. - risk of getting married 0.10 0.08 hazard rate 0.06 0.04 0.02 20 25 30 35 40 age Labourers, Servants & Husbandmen (solid line) vs Merchants, Professionals & Gentry (dashed line) 17 / 40
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