Abstract
This paper considers the effects of the landowning and land reforms on economic and demographic growth by a family-optimization model with endogenous fertility and status-seeking. A land reform provides the peasants with strong incentives to limit their family size and to improve the productivity of land. Even though the income effect due to the land reform tends to raise fertility, a strong enough status-effect outweighs it, thus generating a decrease in population growth. The European demographic history provides supporting anecdotal evidence for this theoretical result.
Keywords
- Fertility Decline
- Demographic History
- Agricultural Technology
- Child Rear
- Land Reform
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- 1.
We ignore mortality in this document, for convenience. The introduction of a constant mortality rate would complicate the analysis, without qualitatively changing the results.
- 2.
If the measure for status, v, were a linearly homogeneous function of a and \({\underline{a}}\), we would obtain the same results with some complication.
- 3.
- 4.
This case is illustrated in Fig. 1b.
- 5.
- 6.
The cohort fertility rate in Fig. 3 gives the total number of births given by women born in the time period indicated in the figure.
- 7.
Unfortunately, the land reform experienced some drawbacks which, together with the general unrest of the time, led to an outburst of a civil war in 1918. One of the conditions for the later social cohesion in Finland was the famous Lex Kallio in 1922 which made larger and wealthier farms possible for the peasants.
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The authors thank the reviewer for constructive comments.
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Lehmijoki, U., Palokangas, T. (2014). Landowning, Status and Population Growth. In: Moser, E., Semmler, W., Tragler, G., Veliov, V. (eds) Dynamic Optimization in Environmental Economics. Dynamic Modeling and Econometrics in Economics and Finance, vol 15. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54086-8_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54086-8_14
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