The impact of real wage and mortality fluctuations on fertility and nuptiality in precensus England

Abstract.

This paper explores the responses of fertility and nuptiality to fluctuations in real wages and mortality that can be inferred from annual series of English historical data over the period 1542 to 1800. The paper begins with a review of the time series properties of the data and summarizes the long-term equilibrium relationships identified in previous work. A Vector Error Correction Mechanism (VECM) is then proposed to study the observed short-term fluctuations in a way that is compatible with long-term equilibria. Following estimation of the parameters of the VECM, an investigation is made of the impact of shocks to real wages and mortality on demographic variables as measured by generalized impulse responses and persistence profiles.