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Long-run Impacts of Forced Labor Migration on Fertility Behaviors: Evidence from Colonial West Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Dupas, Pascaline
  • Falezan, Camille
  • Mabeu, Marie Christelle
  • Rossi, Pauline

Abstract

Is the persistently high fertility in West Africa today rooted in the decades of forced labor migration under colonial rule? We study the case of Burkina Faso, considered the largest labor reservoir in West Africa by the French colonial authorities. Hundreds of thousands of young men were forcibly recruited and sent to work in neighboring colonies for multiple years. The practice started in the late 1910s and lasted until the late 1940s, when forced labor was replaced with voluntary wage employment. We digitize historical maps, combine data from multiple surveys, and exploit the historical, temporary partition of colonial Burkina Faso (and, more speciï¬ cally, the historical land of the Mossi ethnic group) into three zones with different needs for labor to implement a spatial regression discontinuity design analysis. We find that, on the side where Mossi villages were more exposed to forced labor historically, there is more temporary male migration to Cote d’Ivoire up to today, and lower realized and desired fertility today. We show evidence suggesting that the inherited pattern of low-skill circular migration for adult men reduced the reliance on subsistence farming and the accompanying need for child labor. We can rule out women's empowerment or improvements in human and physical capital as pathways for the fertility decline. Thesefindings contribute to the debate on the origins of family institutions and preferences, often mentioned to explain West Africa’s exceptional fertility trends, showing that fertility choices respond to changes in modes of production.

Suggested Citation

  • Dupas, Pascaline & Falezan, Camille & Mabeu, Marie Christelle & Rossi, Pauline, 2023. "Long-run Impacts of Forced Labor Migration on Fertility Behaviors: Evidence from Colonial West Africa," CEPR Discussion Papers 18705, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18705
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    Cited by:

    1. Pascaline Dupas & Seema Jayachandran & Adriana Lleras-Muney & Pauline Rossi, 2024. "The Negligible Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso," NBER Working Papers 32427, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fertility; Africa; Migration; Forced labor; Colonial legacy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J47 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Coercive Labor Markets
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

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