The second half of the 1800s and first half of the 1900s saw a substantial, historically unprecedented, expansion of women's rights, both economic and political, in almost all industrialized countries. Why did this process occur and why is it positively correlated with economic development? This project examines, theoretically and empirically, the hypothesis that the sharp decline in fertility associated with economic development during this period, was an important factor in this phenomenon. It constructs a dynamic model with altruistic fathers and endogenous fertility that embodies the main theoretical mechanism and examines its empirical validity by using variation across US states in their granting of property rights to married women and variation across Swiss cantons in their willingness to grant women suffrage.
Under nineteenth century English common law followed in the US, a married woman was bound by the rules of coverture which vested her legal rights in her husband. A husband controlled his wife's property and earnings and married women were not permitted to enter into contracts without the consent of their husbands nor allowed to engage in trade on their own account as "sole traders". Between 1840 and 1920, these laws were revised and there was a large increase in women's rights. During the same period, there was a substantial fall in fertility. Fertility for white married women fell from 4.76 for the 1840 cohort to 1.86 for the 1900 cohort. The thesis of this project is that these two developments are related. Why should declining fertility be associated with increases in married women's economic rights? The main idea is that lower fertility heightened the tension in men's sometimes competing interests as husbands versus fathers. Although men in general stood to gain from their privileged status in a world in which women had few economic and political rights, they also suffered from the welfare consequences of such a system for their daughters. In particular, a father who wanted to increase the welfare of his children either via bequests or by investing in their human capital, would primarily be able to affect the welfare of his sons; most of the gains from greater capital left to (invested in) a daughter would benefit his son-in-law. As fertility falls, per-household member wealth increases. This leads to greater desired investments in the offspring of a man to increase their welfare. Although increased investments in sons makes them better off, under a patriarchal system it is very difficult to increase the welfare of a daughter. Thus, declining fertility increases the disparity in the welfare of sons versus daughters. With any concavity in a man's utility over children's welfare, this greater disparity increases the attractiveness of a system in which married women have greater bargaining power. Hence, at some critical level of fertility, men would be better off if married women were granted some basic economic rights. This hypothesis is tested using time variation across US states in granting of earnings of women and property rights from 1840-1920 (the timing is available from Geddes and Lueck (2002)). Data are used from the Census to construct fertility measures (children/women) by year and state. Preliminary work shows a significant negative relationship between fertility and the granting of rights of women, even after controlling for the various ways in which states varied (including their levels of wealth). The model is extended to account for political rights and investigated empirically using the variation in the experience of Swiss cantons with suffrage for women.
Broader Impacts: Understanding the role of economic factors in the vast transformation of women?s role requires analyzing how and why institutions changed to accommodate this transformation over the last 200 years. This project contributes to that goal.
