How important was international immigration for the U.S. and its demography during the nineteenth century? This paper investigates, quantitatively, its effect on the westward movement of population and the regional and secular changes in fertility. Beside immigration, two alternative forces are...

Low sex ratios are often equated with unfavorable marriage prospects for women, but in France after World War 1, the marriage probability of single females rose 50%, despite a massive drop in the male/female ratio. We conjecture that the war-time birth-rate bust induced an abnormal postwar...

General equilibrium models are used to explore the interactions between macroeconomics and the two components of population growth: natural increase and net-migration. The first questions at hand are: What caused the baby boom? Can it be explained within the context of the decline in fertility...

What drove western population growth in the U.S. during the 19th century? The facts are: (i) The birth ratio was higher in the West than in the East. Both exhibited a secular decline. (ii) Between 1800 and 1810 net migration accounted for 88% of the rate of population growth in the northwest...

During World War I (1914–1918) the birth rates of countries such as France, Germany, the U.K., Belgium and Italy declined by almost 50 percent. The age structure of these countries’ populations were significantly affected for the duration of the 20th century. In France, where the population...

What caused the baby boom? And, can it be explained within the context of the secular decline in fertility that has occurred over the last 200 years? The hypothesis is that: (i) The secular decline in fertility is due to the relentless rise in real wages that increased the opportunity cost of...

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (i) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (ii) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (iii) a significant decline in marriage and a rise in divorce; (iv)...