Changing World Prices, Women's Wages, and the Fertility Transition: Sweden, 1860-1910
Journal of Political Economy
1985
open access
This paper identifies demand induced changes in the price of women's time as a factor determining the fertility transition.Changes in world prices of grains and animal products in the 1880's affected the composition of Swedish output and labor demands.The increase in the price of butter relative to grains improved women's wages relat.ive to men's, and contributed thereby to the decline in fertility.When child mortality, urbanization, and the real wages of men are held constant, aggregate county-leveldata for a 50-year period, 1860-1910, suggest that this exogenous appreciation in the value of women's time, relative to men's, explains a quarter of the concurrent decline in Swedish fertility.
- DOI
- 10.1086/261353
- Volume
- 93 (6)
- Pages
- 1126-1154
- Language
- en
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- BibTeX
- Sources
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