Revolutionary Transition

Inheritance Change and Fertility Decline

Bibliographic Data

ID10171128
AuthorsVictor Gay (0000-0001-9912-3841, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse), Paula E Gobbi (0000-0002-6647-2030, Université Libre de Bruxelles), Paula Gobbi, Marc Goñi (0000-0002-6862-0973, Centre for Economic Policy Research)
Year2025
Publication date2025-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3808 • E-ISSN: 1537-534X
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/739821
OpenAlexW4390862822
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited71

We test Le Play’s (1875) hypothesis that the French Revolution contributed to France’s early fertility decline. In 1793, a series of inheritance reforms abolished local inheritance practices, imposing equal partition of assets among all children. We develop a theoretical framework that predicts a decline in fertility following these reforms because of indivisibility constraints in parents’ assets. We test this hypothesis by combining a newly created map of pre-Revolution local inheritance practices together with demographic data from the Henry database and from rowdsourced geneaologies in Geni.com. We provide difference-in-differences and regressiondiscontinuity estimates based on comparing cohorts of fertile age and cohorts too old to be fertile in 1793 between municipalities where the reforms altered and did not alter existing inheritance practices. We find that the 1793 inheritance reforms reduced completed fertility by half to one child, closed the pre-reform fertility gap between different inheritance regions, and sharply accelerated France’s early fertility transition

Biology · Demographic economics · Economics · Evolutionary biology · Fertility · Geography · Inheritance (genetic algorithm · Sociology · Transition (genetics · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Demography · Genetics

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