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Economic aspects of historical demographic change
This paper explores several related propositions about rural economic life and demographic change. A central thesis is that the shrinking of the farm labor force associated with past processes of economic development led to lower fertility. A subsidiary thesis is that this effect may no longer be essential to cause fertility decline; government population policies can substitute for it. This paper emphasizes two features of the transition in now-industrial countries: (1) the rising costs and falling benefits to parents of having many children, and (2) the link of that change to productivity growth in and structural change away from farming. Labor-saving innovations on farms lessened the benefits of children, causing the main fertility transition. Women left unpaid family labor on farms to work in offices, factories, and shops; this shift depressed fertility as jobs interfered with...
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