Health and the Revolution in Household Behavior 1880-1940: Fertility, Education and Married Female Labor Supply

Between the latter nineteenth century and the 1930s there was a dramatic revolution in Ameri-can families. Family size continued its long-term decline, the schooling of older children expanded dramatically and the proportion of married femalesadulthood devoted to market-oriented activities increased. Over this same period there were signi\u85cant reductions in mortality, especially among the young, and impressive reductions in morbidity. This paper considers all these trends jointly, model-ing the changes in fertility, child schooling and lifetime married female labor supply as a consequence of exogenous changes in health. These interactions are then quanti\u85ed using calibration techniques. The simulations suggest that reductions in child mortality alone cannot explain the transformation of the American family. Indeed, in our preferred calibration, reductions in child mortality lead to a modest decline in human capital and increase in fertility, with little e¤ect on married female labor force involvement. In sharp contrast, reductions in morbidity are found to lower fertility and increase education. The time savings from lower fertility more than o¤set the increased time mothers invest in their childrensquality, freeing some time for market work. However, lower fertility alone cannot account for the increase in market work of married women. In our framework, the majority of th