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The Determinants of the Fertility Transition in Antebellum Ohio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Don R. Leet
Don R. Leet
Affiliation:
California State University, Fresno, and Colby College
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Extract

The cross-sectional and secular variations in the fertility of the white population in pre-Civil War Ohio are analyzed with special regard to the role of population pressure in conditioning these patterns and trends. Other factors, such as urbanization, education, cultural heritage, and the sex ratio, all of which are often cited as major explanatory variables during the demographic transition are also introduced. Although each of these variables is shown to have some impact, none can account for more than a minor proportion of the Variance in human fertility. It appears that the major force affecting both inter-county fertility and the secular trend for the state was the Variation in the degree of population pressure as measured by the average assessed value of an acre of non-urban land.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 359 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1976

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References

1 The reliability of the child-woman ratios in approximating fertility rates is well documented in the demographic literature. For an example see Bogue, Donald J. and Palmore, James A., “Some Empirical and Analytical Relations Among Demographic Fertility Measures With Regression Models for Fertility Estimation,” Demography, 1 (December 1964), pp. 316–338CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or a study done by Grabill, W. H. and Cho, L. J., “Methodology for the Measurement of Current Fertility from Population Data on Young Children,” Demography, 2 (June 1965), pp. 50–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which comes to a similar conclusion.

2 Yasuba, Yasukichi, Birth Rates of the White Population in the United States, 1800–1860 (Baltimore, 1962)Google Scholar.

3 Forster, Colin and Tucker, G. S. L., Economic Opportunity and American Fertility Ratios, 1800–1860 (New Haven, 1972)Google Scholar.

4 Yasuba argues that the crude death rate in the United States may have risen from 1840 to 1860 due essentially to increasing urbanization and industrialization. Meeker, Edward, in “The Improving Health of the United States, 1850–1915,” Explorations in Economic History, 9 (Summer 1972), p. 353CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, argues that during the last half of the nineteenth century “a fundamental transition in the state of health occurred in the decade of the eighties, [and] that average mortality and life expectancy improved little, and very likely worsened, prior to 1880, but improved rapidly thereafter.” Thompson, Warren S. and Whelpton, P. K., Population Trends in the United States (New York, 1933), p. 230Google Scholar, state that there was a rather continuous decline in mortality from 1789 onward. Taeuber, Conrad and Taeuber, Irene, The Changing Population of the United States (New York, 1958), p. 269Google Scholar, claim that “there is no conclusive evidence of substantial declines in mortality in the first half of the nineteenth century. From 1850 to the present, however, declines in mortality seem to have been almost continuous, and in recent decades have been great.” Coale, Ansley J. and Zelnick, Melvin, New Estimates of Fertility and Population in the United States (Princeton, 1963), pp. 7–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, agree with the Taeubers about the steady improvement in mortality conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus we have one authority who sees rises in mortality from at least 1850 to 1860, and another who views a rise in mortality until 1880 as “very likely.” A second group of authors see rather continuous declines, while the final two pairs of scholars feel that the mortality decline did not begin until 1850 and accelerated only in recent decades.

5 Vinovskis, Maris, “Mortality Rates and Trends in Massachusetts before 1860,” Journal of Economic History, 32 (March 1972), pp. 184–213CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

6 For a defense based on English data see Tucker, G. S. L., “A Note on the Reliability of Fertility Ratios,” Australian Economic History Review, 14 (September 1974), pp. 160–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McInnis, R. Marvin, reporting on his study of nineteenth-century Canada, wrote “[T]he evidence I am getting from Canadian data is that true fertility differentials swamp even quite large variations in infant mortality.” (Private correspondence August 7, 1975)Google Scholar.

7 The argument is often made that young and presumably more fecund women migrate to the frontier. This presumably results in an unusual age pyramid for women so that the ratio of women 20 to 29 to women 16 to 44 on the frontier is greater than the ratio of similarly aged women in non-frontier areas. In order to remove this possible bias I indirectly standardized all of the county fertility ratios with respect to age. The formula is:

Where W represents women in various age classes, t is the time period, c indicates county data, s refers to the standard population (Ohio, 1860), and r is the age specific ratio of “own” children under 10 to native white women in the United States in 1910—Yasuba first used this “r” in his path-breaking work, Birth Rates and Forster and Tucker also adopted it for their study, Economic Opportunity. For a more detailed examination of my procedures, see Leet, Don R., “Population Pressure and Human Fertility Response: Ohio, 1810–1860” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1972), pp. 36–40 and 73–78Google Scholar. A more general discussion of age standardization appears in U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Methods and Materials of Demography, by Shryock, Henry S., Siegel, Jacob S., and Associates (Washington, 1973), pp. 481–485Google Scholar. It is possible, however, that women of a given age and with large families migrate, while women of the same age with small families do not. This problem will be addressed in a later section.

8 In this analysis I am following the density criterion for “frontier” as defined by Eblen, Jack E., “Analysis of Nineteenth Century Frontier Populations,” Demography, 2 (December 1965), pp. 399–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 An exploratory essay on the relationship between farmsites and human fertility may be found in Easterlin, Richard A., “Effects of Agrarian Population Pressure: Some Prospective Lines of Analysis” (Working Paper, University of Pennsylvania, 1971)Google Scholar. A succinct outline of this causal chain may also be found in a classic text by Marshall, Alfred, Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London, 1920; reprinted 1962), pp. 150–153Google Scholar.

10 The concept of a multi-phasic response to population pressure was developed by Davis, Kingsley, “The Theory of Change and Response in Modern Demographic History,” Population Index, 39 (October 1963), pp. 345–366Google Scholar. A further elaboration on the American case may be found in Easterlin, Richard A., “Does Human Fertility Adjust to the Environment?” American Economic Review, 61 (May 1971), pp. 399–407Google Scholar.

11 Leet, Don R., “Human Fertility and Agricultural Opportunities in Ohio Counties: From Frontier to Maturity, 1810–1860,” in Vedder, Richard K. and Klingaman, D. C., eds., Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History (Ohio University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

12 Forster and Tucker, Economic Opportunity.

13 Bogart, Ernest L., Financial History of Ohio (Urbana, 1912), pp. 202–206Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 203.

15 The relevant reports consulted for this study were: “The Annual Report of the Auditor of the State for 1830,” in the Journal of the House of Representatives (Columbus, 1830), unnumbered table; Annual Report of the Auditor of the State (Columbus, 1840), unnumbered table; Annual Report of the Secretary of State (Columbus, 1850), pp. 218–221.

16 A ten-year time lag was introduced such that the fertility ratio computed in 1840 was associated with population pressure in 1830. The argument is that fertility is a response to population pressure and thus some lag must be expected. Further, since the numerator of the fertility ratio is composed of children aged 0 to 9, the childwoman ratio in 1840 represents births over die 1830–1839 period. If one used the 1830 fertility ratio, then births from 1820 through 1829 would be correlated with population pressure in 1830 and the causal association would be in the opposite direction of the one posited in the text. The lag procedure was followed for all the determinants of fertility, for example, the illiteracy rate in 1840 is correlated with the fertility ratio of 1850.

17 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ohio Soil and Water Conservation Needs Inventory (Columbus, 1961)Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 12.

19 Ibid., Table 9, p. 17.

20 The theoretical underpinnings of this positive association were first elaborated by Becker, Gary S., “An Economic Analysis of Fertility,” in Universities National Bureau Committee for Economic Research, Demographic Change in Developed Countries (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar. A more recent empirical study may be found in Cain, Glen G. and Weininger, Adriana, “Economic Determinants of Fertility: Results from Cross-Sectional Aggregate Data,” Demography, 10 (May 1973), pp. 205–223CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

21 Wright, Gavin, “Dissertation Comments,” Journal of Economic History 34 (March 1974), p. 305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Strictly speaking the refined birth rate would have the actual number of births in the numerator whereas I only have the number of infants surviving. Nevertheless, mortality was probably as great, if not greater, in frontier areas and thus the mortality component should not bias the results. Vinovskis has argued that for antebellum Massachusetts there was very little difference in life expectancy among towns of less than 10,000. Vinovskis, “Mortality Rates,” p. 210.

23 The importance of education in determining fertility in modern nations is well supported by a number of authors. See, for example, Adelman, Irma, “An Econometric Analysis of Population Growth,” American Economic Review, 53 (June 1963), pp. 314–339Google Scholar. And in nineteenth-century America by Vinovskis, Maris A., “Socio-Economic Determinants of Interstate Fertility Differentials in the United States in 1850–1860,” (Working Paper 73–15, University of Wisconsin, 1973)Google Scholar.

24 The importance of the effect of urbanization on human fertility can be found in Notestein, Frank W., “The Economics of Population and Food Supplies,” Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Agricultural Economists (London, 1953)Google Scholar. In regard to the American experience, see Potter, J., “The Growth of Population in America, 1700–1800,” in Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C., eds., Population in History (London, 1965), p. 677Google Scholar. For a more specific study see Modell, John, “Family and Fertility on the Indiana Frontier, 1920,” The American Quarterly, 23 (December 1971), pp. 615–634CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Tʼien, H. Yuan, “A Demographic Aspect of Interstate Variations in American Fertility, 1800–1860,” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 37 (January 1959), pp. 49–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A more recent study based on a sample of the manuscript census for the southern states has further elaborated on the importance of sex ratios in determining cross-sectional fertility differentials. Steckel, Richard H., “Marriage Market Characteristics, Economic Opportunity and Fertility Among Antebellum Southern Whites,”paper presented at conference on Behavioral Models in Historical Demography,Philadelphia,October 1974.Google Scholar

26 Yasuba, Birth Rates, pp. 50–54.

27 Weisenburger, Francis P., The Passing of the Frontier: 1825–1850, in Wittke, Carl, ed., The History of the State of Ohio (Columbus, 1942; reprinted 1968), p. 10Google Scholar.

28 The following algorithm can provide an upper bound estimate for the influence of urbanization:

where Fo is the fertility ratio for Ohio; Pr is the proportion of the population in rural areas; Fr is the fertility ratio of rural areas; Pu is the proportion of the population in urban areas; Pu is the fertility ratio of urban areas. Ideally Pr and Pu should be the proportion of females in the child-bearing ages in rural and urban areas. Since the data is unavailable the proportions of total population were used. Thus the proportions in 1860 were Pr = 82.6 and Pu = 17.4. Given that Fo = 1360 and assuming that Fu = 0, then Fr would have been 1646. Thus rural fertility would have declined by at least 25 percent from 1810 to 1860.

29 Leet, “Population Pressure,” Table 3.9, p. 54.