The Decline in Fertility and the Life Cycle Transition in the Antebellum United States

Eighteenth-century American farms were family owned, family operated, and selfsufficient. At the same time, the fertility of the population inhabiting those farms was extremely high. These two characteristics of the rural population were mutually reinforcing. Selfsufficiency meant an absence of well-developed markets that, in turn, required reliance upon family-based mechanisms of reciprocity to provide farm labor and old-age security. Large families supplied the needed labor during the seasonal peaks of agricultural work but they also supplied a surplus of labor in the off-season. This energy was employed in the home manufacturing of textiles, tools, and the like. The low opportunity cost of off-peak labor, in turn, inhibited the rise of urban manufacturing and retarded the development of markets (Clark 1979; Hymer and Resnick 1969). The absence of an urban alternative to agriculture assured that the primary emphasis of parents would be to raise their children to continue the tradition of family farming.