Fertility and Wars: The Case of World War I in France

Guillaume Vandenbroucke

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2014, vol. 6, issue 2, 108-36

Abstract: During World War I the birth rate in France fell by 50%. Why? I build a model of fertility choices where the war implies a positive probability that a wife remains alone, a partially-compensated loss of a husband's income, and a temporary decline in productivity followed by faster growth. I calibrate the model's key parameters using pre-war data. I find that it accounts for 91% of the decline of the birth rate. The main determinant of this result is the loss of expected income associated with the risk that a wife remains alone.

JEL-codes: D74 J13 J24 N33 N34 N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.6.2.108
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

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