The Emergence of the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff - insights from early modern academics
中文摘要
设想一次由高人力资本人群引领的、走出停滞马尔萨斯体系的转型。对子女质量具有更强偏好的个体, 可能最先摆脱马尔萨斯体制并采纳现代生育行为 (Galor and Moav 2002)。为检验这一假说, 我们考察了工业革命前两个世纪北欧学者的家庭规模与人力资本之间的关系。我们采用一种基于学者出版物的新方法来衡量其人力资本。我们发现, 出版物数量高于中位数的学者, 在18世纪上半叶从拥有较多兄弟姐妹转变为拥有较少兄弟姐妹。通过间接推断估计一个演化增长模型的参数, 我们揭示了马尔萨斯约束最初如何促使高人力资本家庭生育更多子女, 而后又被内生地替代为贝克尔式约束, 即子女质量与数量之间的权衡。我们的结果支持对 Galor and Moav (2002) 方法的扩展: 马尔萨斯约束的衰退与18世纪人力资本的积累相联系。
Abstract
Abstract Consider the transition out of a stagnant Malthusian system spearheaded by high-human-capital people. Individuals with a stronger preference for offspring quality may be the first to escape the Malthusian regime and adopt modern fertility behaviours (Galor and Moav 2002). To test this hypothesis, we examine the relationship between family size and human capital among academics in Northern Europe in the two centuries before the Industrial Revolution. We measure the human capital of academics using a novel approach based on their publications. We find that scholars with a higher number of publications than the median shifted from having more siblings to having fewer siblings in the first half of the 18th century. Estimating the parameters of an evolutionary growth model by indirect inference, we show how Malthusian constraints initially led the high human capital families to reproduce more, before being endogenously replaced by Beckerian constraints with a tradeoff between child quality and quantity. Our results support an extension of Galor and Moav’s (2002) approach, in which the decline of Malthusian constraints is linked to the accumulation of human capital during the 18th century.