Socioeconomic status and fertility: Insights from historical transitions in Europe and North America

One of the major demographic changes during the past 200 years is the emergence of the twochild norm as part of the creation of the modern family. While we know a great deal about the timing of the fertility transition in different regions, we know much less about specific features and causes. The aim of this paper is to use longitudinal micro-level data for seven local populations in Europe and North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to study the relationship between socioeconomic status and fertility before, during and after the transition. Using the same analytical model allows us not only to test hypotheses about the reversal of class differences, but also to address possible determinants of fertility decline more generally. More specifically we look at the development of socioeconomic differences in marital fertility and relate it to common theories on fertility behavior as adjustment and innovation processes. Our results do not provide strong support for the hypothesis of high fertility among the upper classes in pretransitional society, but support the idea that they acted as forerunners in the transition by being early in reducing their fertility. Besides this regularity, the patterns of class differences in fertility varied a great deal between populations, pointing to the importance of local contextual factors. Preliminary work, please do not cite. Paper for the annual meeting of the Economic History Association, Washington, DC, September 20-22 2013. This work is part of the project “Towards the modern family. Socioeconomic stratification, family formation and fertility in a historical perspective”, funded by the Swedish Research Council.