This article reviews research on the effects of economic recessions on fertility in the developed world. We study how economic downturns, as measured by various indicators, especially by declining GDP levels, falling consumer confidence, and rising unemployment, were found to affect fertility. We also discuss particular mechanisms through which the recession may have influenced fertility behavior, including the effects of economic uncertainty, falling income, changes in the housing market, and rising enrollment in higher education, and also factors that influence fertility indirectly such as declining marriage rates. Most studies find that fertility tends to be pro-cyclical and often rises and declines with the ups and downs of the business cycle. Usually, these aggregate effects are relatively small (typically, a few percentage points) and of short durations; in addition they often influence especially the timing of childbearing and in most cases do not leave an imprint on cohort fertility levels. Therefore, major long-term fertility shifts often continue seemingly uninterrupted during the recession—including the fertility declines before and during the Great Depression of the 1930s and before and during the oil shock crises of the 1970s. Changes in the opportunity costs of childbearing and fertility behavior during economic downturn vary by sex, age, social status, and number of children; childless young adults are usually most affected. Furthermore, various policies and institutions may modify or even reverse the relationship between recessions and fertility. The first evidence pertaining to the recent recession falls in line with these findings. In most countries, the recession has brought a decline in the number of births and fertility rates, often marking a sharp halt to the previous decade of rising fertility rates.

/pdf/economic-recession-and-fertility-in-the-developed-world-1m72npm7fw.pdf

Economic Recession and Fertility in the Developed World

Demographic research frequently reports consistent and significant associations between formal educational attainment and a range of health risks such as smoking, drug abuse, and accidents, as well as the contraction of many diseases, and health outcomes such as mortality—almost all indicating the same conclusion: better-educated individuals are healthier and live longer. Despite the substantial reporting of a robust education effect, there is inadequate appreciation of its independent influence and role as a causal agent. To address the effect of education on health in general, three contributions are provided: 1) a macro-level summary of the dimensions of the worldwide educational revolution and a reassessment of its causal role in the health of individuals and in the demographic health transition are carried out; 2) a meta-analysis of methodologically sophisticated studies of the effect of educational attainment on all-cause mortality is conducted to establish the independence and robustness of the education effect on health; and 3) a schooling-cognition hypothesis about the influence of education as a powerful determinant of health is developed in light of new multidisciplinary cognitive research.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/23043284

The education effect on population health: a reassessment.

1. Economic growth during the long twentieth century Nicholas Crafts 2. From empire to Europe: Britain in the world economy Kevin O'Rourke 3. Population, migration and labour supply Tim Hatton 4. Health and welfare Bernard Harris 5. Income and living standards Ian Gazeley 6. Technology, innovation and economic growth Tom Nicholas 7. Consumption and affluence Avner Offer 8. Cycles and depressions Matthias Morys 9. The City and the corporate economy David Chambers 10. Armaments and the economy Jari Eloranta 11. The deindustrial revolution: the rise and fall of UK manufacturing, 1870-2010 Michael Kitson and Jonathan Michie 12. The rise of the service sector Steve Broadberry 13. The household economy Peter Scott 14. Growth of the public sector Bob Millward 15. Soft power: the media industries Gerben Bakker 16. Sterling and monetary policy Catherine Schenk 17. Economic policy and management Roger Middleton 18. Economic ideas and ideology Roger Backhouse and Keith Tribe.

The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain

INTRODUCTION British agriculture developed in a distinctive manner that made important contributions to economic growth. By the early nineteenth century, agricultural labour productivity was one third higher in England than in France, and each British farm worker produced over twice as much as his Russian counterpart (Bairoch 1965; O’Brien and Keyder 1978; Wrigley 1985; Allen 1988, 2000). Although the yield per acre of grains was no higher in Britain than in other parts of north-western Europe, the region as a whole reaped yields twice those in most other parts of the world (Allen and O’Grada 1988; Allen 1992.) Most accounts of British farming link the high level of efficiency to Britain’s peculiar agrarian institutions. In many parts of the continent, farms were small, operated by families without hired labour and often owned by their cultivators. Farms often consisted of strips scattered in open fields, and animals were often grazed on commons. Peasant farming of this sort was consolidated by the French Revolution. In contrast, in Britain, the open fields were enclosed, farm size increased and tenancy became general. While this transformation had been underway since the middle ages, it reached its culmination during the industrial revolution. Furthermore, it is often claimed that the agrarian transformation made important contributions to industrialisation by increasing output and supplying the industrial economy with labour and capital.

Agriculture during the industrial revolution, 1700–1850

INTRODUCTION Suppose that a deadly plague had swept through Britain in 1860, exterminating its entire population of 23 million people. Suppose then that immediately thereafter a sea-borne group of 23 million unschooled Eskimos (Inuit) had come upon Britain and settled the initially unpopulated area, but still possessing all the buildings, machinery and materials of the mid-Victorian economy at its height. One would expect a massive fall in the production of the economy to occur, given the unsuitability of Eskimo skills for the mid-Victorian environment and economy of Britain. This should be attributed to a mismatch of skills, not to some inherent naivete of the Eskimos. Indeed, an analogous transference of the mid-Victorian British population north of the Arctic Circle would result in a similar initial drop in output relative to Eskimo levels, and survival itself would be at stake, given the unsuitability of Victorian English skills for subsisting in an Arctic environment. Just how large the fall would be is of course subject to considerable speculation. One can get some sense of possible magnitudes by looking at the difference between the actual share of national income going to labour in Britain c. 1860 and the share that labour would have received if paid at unskilled wage rates. Labour’s share of national income for Britain in 1856 has been estimated at 57.8 per cent (Matthews et al. 1982: 164). Gross domestic product for the United Kingdom in 1860 has been put at £683 million (Feinstein 1972: T4). The United Kingdom working population in 1860 was around 12.98 million people (Feinstein 1972).

Education and skill of the British labour force

The British fertility decline

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Michael S. Teitelbaum

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

The British fertility decline