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Antebellum Southern White Fertility: A Demographic and Economic Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Richard H. Steckel
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Abstract

This paper investigates the decline and regional differential in antebellum southern white fertility using published census materials and the 1860 population schedules. Demographic analysis is conducted with a synthetic total fertility rate that has four components: age at first birth, age at last surviving birth, surviving-child spacing, and the proportion of women who eventually have surviving children. The socioeconomic analysis employs regressions and focuses on causes of the underlying changes in the components. Family limitation appears to have been unimportant in this population. The distribution of wealth was.probably an important factor shaping the time trend and regional differential in fertility.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 331 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1980

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References

The author is Assistant Professor of. Economics at Ohio State University. This paper is based on a portion of his Ph.D. dissertation prepared for the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. The members of his committee, Robert Fogel, Marc Nerlove, and T.W. Schultz, as well as Stanley Engerman and anonymous referees, contributed to the development of the material. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Rockefeller Foundation through a grant to the University of Chicago for the Study of the Economics of Population and Family Decision-Making, and Ohio State University.

1 Child-woman ratios by time period and region are given in Easterlin, Richard A., “Does Human Fertility Adjust to the Environment?,” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 61 (05 1971), 402–03Google Scholar.

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7 Various measures of the availability of land or “population pressure” are discussed in , Leet, “Determinants,” 363–66Google Scholar.

8 Mclnnis, “Childbearing and Land Availability,” and Easterlin et al., “Farms and Farm Families.”

9 Steckel, Richard H., The Economics of U.S. Slave and Southern White Fertility (New York, 1980), pp. 132–33Google Scholar.

10 In 1860 the value of personal estate constituted about 42 percent of the combined value of real estate and personal estate (estimated for assessment purposes). See U.S. Census Office, Statistics of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1866), Table 1, p. 294Google ScholarPubMed. Unfortunately, the manuscript schedules did not list the value of personal estate in earlier years.

11 The contents of the various census schedules are discussed in Wright, Carroll D., The History and Growth of the United States Census (Washington, D.C., 1900)Google Scholar.

12 The states are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

13 , Steckel, Economics, pp. 69–74Google Scholar.

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15 A more complete discussion of the biases can be found in , Steckel, Economics, pp: 96–99Google Scholar.

16 The measure is discussed in Trussell, James and Steckel, Richard, “The Age of Slaves at Menarche and Their first Birth,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8 (Winter 1978), 477–505CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

17 The slave infant mortality rate calculated from plantation records is 233 per thousand. Approximately 201 of every thousand children who survived to age 1 did not survive to age 5. Although it is recognized that slave and white mortality rates may have differed, these data suggest that a figure in the neighborhood of 40 percent is not unreasonable. The slave mortality rates are discussed in Steckel, Richard H., “Slave Mortality: Analysis of Evidence from Plantation Records,” Social Science His tory, (3 10 1979), 86–114Google Scholar.

18 The estimate equals where qi is the probability of not living to age i, p (ai) is the relative frequency of aj, and a'j represents the average age of two adjacent surviving children. The values of qi are the averages of linear interpolation of male and female death rates from Evans, Robert Jr, “The Economics of American Negro Slavery,” in Universities-National Bureau Committee for Economic Research, Aspects of Labor Economics (Princeton, 1962), p. 212Google Scholar. The technique is relatively crude because it does not allow for multiple deaths between surviving births or for departures from the household. Consequently, the figure of 30.7 is probably an underestimate.

19 The elasticity of R with respect to S is -(L-F)/(L-F+S), which is slightly less than one in absolute value.

20 The relative importance of each component was determined using an equation for the percentage change in R. The equation is:

21 Henry, Louis, Anciennes families genevoises, Cahier No. 26 (Paris, 1956), pp. 87–93.Google Scholar; Wrigley, Edward A, “Family Limitation in Pre-Industrial England,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 20 (04 1966), 82–109Google Scholar.

22 See footnote 18.

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25 The role of search in marriage behavior is discussed by Becker, Gary S., “A Theory of Marriage: Part II,” Journal of Political Economy, 82 (03-04 1974), 11–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Coale, Ansley J. and Zelnik, Melvin, New Estimates of Fertility and Population in the United States (Princeton, 1963), pp. 33–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Grabill, Wilson H., Kiser, Clyde V., and Whelpton, Pascal K., The Fertility of American Women (New York, 1958), p. 106Google Scholar; Hareven, Tamara K. and Vinovskis, Maris A., “Marital Fertility, Ethnicity, and Occupation in Urban Families: An Analysis of South Boston and the South End in 1880,” Journal of Social History, 8 (Spring 1975), 69–93Google Scholar.

28 T'ien, H. Yuan, “A Demographic Aspect of Interstate Variations in American Fertility, 1800–1860,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 37 (01 1959), 49–59Google Scholar; , Forster and , Tucker, Economic Opportunity, p. 64Google Scholar; , Leet, “Determinants,” 371–75Google Scholar. The results of Forster and Tucker and Leet are mixed with regard to the statistical significance of the sex ratio.

29 The Herfindahl index is used in studies of industrial organization to measure the concentration of sales within an industry. A discussion of measures of concentration can be found in Stigler, George J., The Organization of Industry (Homewood, IL, 1968), pp. 29–38Google Scholar. The number of seats for each denomination is given in U. S. Census Office, Statistics of the United States in 1860, pp. 352–496. Sample values of the index range from.180 to.596Google Scholar.

30 A logistic probability model was chosen for estimation purposes because the dependent variable is dichotomous. The model is discussed in , Steckel, Economics, pp. 135–39Google Scholar. The advantages of the model are discussed in Nerlove, Marc and Press, S. James, “Univariate and Multivariate Log-Linear and Logistic Models,” R-1306-EDA/NIH (Santa Monica, 1973), pp. 3–9Google Scholar. The variables shown were selected by a step-wise procedure. The absence of the variable representing foreign birth indicates that the coefficient is statistically insignificant.

31 In these and similar calculations, the other independent variables are evaluated at their sample means.

32 Individuals who lived alone or who resided with a nuclear family are considered separate families. Unfortunately, data that permit the calculation of net worth are not available.

33 United Nations, “Foetal, Infant, and Early Childhood Mortality,” vol. 2, Biological, Social and Economic Factors, Series A, Population Studies, No. 13, Add; 1 (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.

34 There are insufficient observations to distinguish among city sizes.

35 Some results using 1850 census data are discussed in Steckel, , Economics, pp. 155-56Google Scholar.

36 Similar results were obtained with R as the dependent variable.

37 The calculations and related assumptions are discussed in detail in , Steckel, Economics, pp. 162–66Google Scholar.

38 Lee , Soltow, Men and Wealth in the United Slates (New Haven, 1975)Google Scholar; Soltow, Lee, “Economic Inequality in the United States in the Period from 1790–1860,” this Journal, 31 (12 1971), 822–39Google Scholar; Gallman, Robert E., “Trends in the Size Distribution of Wealth in the Nineteenth Century: Some Speculations,” in Soltow, Lee, ed., Six Papers on the Size Distribution of Wealth and Income, Studies in Income and Wealth (New York, 1969), pp. 1–25Google Scholar; Main, Jackson Turner, “Trends in Wealth Concentration Before 1860,” this Journal, 31 (06 1971), 445–47Google Scholar; Main, Gloria L., “Inequality in Early America: The Evidence from Probate Records of Massachusetts and Maryland,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (Spring 1977), 559–81Google Scholar; Linden, Peter H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Three Centuries of American Inequality,” Research in Economic History, 1 (1976), 69–123Google Scholar.

39 Richard H. Steckel, “The Fertility of American Slaves,” Research in Economic History (forthcoming).

40 Easterlin, et al., “Farms and Farm Families,” p. 65Google Scholar.

41 , Steckel, Economics, p, 103Google Scholar.

42 Hajnal, John, “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective,” pp. 101–43 inGoogle Scholar Glass and Eversley, eds., Population in History.