Abstract
This paper provides evidence that the form of agriculture traditionally practiced—intensive plough agriculture versus shifting hoe agriculture—affected historic norms and preferences about fertility, and that these norms persist, affecting observed fertility around the world today.
Highlights
In societies featuring plough agriculture, gender attitudes typically exhibit less equality regarding the role of men and women in society, and the view that the appropriate role for women is in the domestic sphere is much more common
We show that a history of plough agriculture, today, is associated with attitudes of gender inequality, and with less female participation in the labor force, entrepreneurial activities, and politics
We find a negative correlation between historic plough use and total fertility rates today across countries and among first- and secondgeneration immigrants in the US
Summary
With intensive cultivation, which uses the plough, agricultural work requires significant strength In these societies men tend to specialize in agriculture and women tend to specialize in home production and other work within the domestic sphere. In Alesina, Giuliano, and Nunn (2010), we test Boserup’s hypothesis by constructing a measure of historic plough use among the ancestors of populations today. The current study tests this hypothesis, and finds a surprising result: societies that historically engaged in plough agriculture today have lower fertility, not higher fertility. We show that this relationship is robust and is not caused by statistical outliers or omitted variables bias. The measure of historic plough use, which we take from Alesina, Giuliano, and Nunn (2010), is constructed using information, from the Ethnographic Atlas, on the traditional use of the plough among 1,267 ethnic groups worldwide
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