Key Forces Behind the Decline of Fertility: Lessons from Childlessness in Rouen before the Industrial Revolution

To better understand the forces underlying fertility decisions, we look at the forerunners of fertility decline. In Rouen, France, completed fertility dropped between 1640 and 1792 from 7.4 to 4.2 children. We review the list of possible explanations and keep only three: increase in materialism, women's empowerment and increase in returning to education. We propose a theory that shows that we can discriminate between these explanations by looking at childlessness and its social gradient. An increase in materialism or, under certain conditions, an increase in women's empowerment, leads to an increase in childlessness, while an increase in returning to education leads to a decrease in childlessness. Looking at the Rouen data, childlessness is clearly on the rise, from 4% in 1640 to 10% at the end of the 18th century, which appears to discredit the explanation based on increasing returns to education, at least for this period