IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v74y2014i04p1045-1071_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fertility and the Price of Children: Evidence from Slavery and Slave Emancipation

Author

Listed:
  • Wanamaker, Marianne H.

Abstract

Theories of the demographic transition often center on the rising price of children. A model of fertility derived from household production in the antebellum United States contains both own children and slaves as inputs. Changes in slaveholdings beget changes in the marginal product of the slaveowners’ own children and, hence, their price. I use panel data on slaveowning households between 1850 and 1870 to measure the slaveowners’ own fertility responses to exogenous changes in slaveholdings. Results indicate a strong, negative correlation between own child prices and fertility.

Suggested Citation

  • Wanamaker, Marianne H., 2014. "Fertility and the Price of Children: Evidence from Slavery and Slave Emancipation," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(4), pages 1045-1071, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:74:y:2014:i:04:p:1045-1071_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050714000850/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Philipp Ager & Leah Boustan & Katherine Eriksson, 2021. "The Intergenerational Effects of a Large Wealth Shock: White Southerners after the Civil War," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(11), pages 3767-3794, November.
    2. Joanna N. Lahey & Marianne H. Wanamaker, 2022. "Effects of Restrictive Abortion Legislation on Cohort Mortality Evidence from 19th Century Law Variation," NBER Working Papers 30201, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Richard C. Sutch, 2018. "The Economics of African American Slavery: The Cliometrics Debate," NBER Working Papers 25197, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Chiswick, Barry R. & Robinson, RaeAnn H., 2023. "The Occupational Attainment of American Jewish Men in the Mid-19th Century," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1256, Global Labor Organization (GLO).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:74:y:2014:i:04:p:1045-1071_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.