Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T15:40:07.546Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dead men tell no tales: the role of cultural transmission in demographic change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2021

Roman Zakharenko Open the ORCID record for Roman Zakharenko [Opens in a new window]
Roman Zakharenko*
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The paper explains long-term changes in birth, death rates, and in attitude to personal consumption by evolution of preferences by means of cultural transmission. When communities are culturally isolated, they are focused on population growth, which results in large fertility and welfare transfers to children, limited adult consumption, and lack of old-age support. With increasing cultural contact across communities, successful cultural traits induce their hosts to increase their social visibility by limiting fertility and increasing longevity via higher individual consumption. Empirical analysis confirms that social visibility, as measured by the number of language versions of Wikipedia biographical pages, is associated with fewer children and longer lifespan. The presence of notable individuals precedes reduced aggregate birth rates.

Keywords

Cultural transmissiondemographic transitionsocial influence

JEL classification

Z19: Other J11: Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts J14: Economics of the Elderly • Economics of the Handicapped • Non-Labor Market Discrimination J13: Fertility • Family Planning • Child Care • Children • Youth
Type
Research Paper
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 87 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 511 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with Université catholique de Louvain.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, M.J. and Collins, W.J. (2011) Did improvements in household technology cause the baby boom, evidence from electrification, appliance diffusion, and the Amish?. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 3(2), 189–217.Google Scholar
Barro, R.J. and Lee, J.W. (2013) A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010. Journal of Development Economics 104, 184–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baudin, T. (2010) A role for cultural transmission in fertility transitions. Macroeconomic Dynamics 14, 454–481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, G.S. (1960) An economic analysis of fertility. In Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries, pp. 225–256. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Becker, G.S. (2009) A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bisin, A. and Verdier, T. (2001) The economics of cultural transmission and the dynamics of preferences. Journal of Economic Theory 97, 298–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blewett, L.A., Drew, J.A.R., Griffin, R., King, M.L. and Williams, K.C. (2018) IPUMS Health Surveys: National Health Interview Survey, Version 6.3 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN.Google Scholar
Bolt, J., Inklaar, R., de Jong, H. and van Zanden, J. (2018) Maddison project database, version 2018. Rebasing “Maddison”: new income comparisons and the shape of long-run economic development.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. and Richerson, P.J. (1985) Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Caldwell, J.C. (1976) Toward a restatement of demographic transition theory. Population and Development Review 2, 321–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daudin, G., Franck, R. and Rapoport, H. (2018) Can internal migration foster the convergence in regional fertility rates? Evidence from 19th century France. The Economic Journal 129, 1618–1692.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Croix, D. and Licandro, O. (2015) The longevity of famous people from Hammurabi to Einstein. Journal of Economic Growth 20, 263–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doepke, M. (2015) Gary Becker on the quantity and quality of children. Journal of Demographic Economics 81, 59–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galor, O. and Moav, O. (2002) Natural selection and the origin of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, 1133–1191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greksa, L.P. (2002) Population growth and fertility patterns in an Old Order Amish settlement. Annals of Human Biology 29, 192–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ihara, Y. and Feldman, M.W. (2004) Cultural niche construction and the evolution of small family size. Theoretical Population Biology 65, 105–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kalemli-Ozcan, S. (2003) A stochastic model of mortality, fertility, and human capital investment. Journal of Development Economics 70, 103–118(16).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, H. (1994) Evolutionary and wealth flows theories of fertility: empirical tests and new models. Population and Development Review 20, 753–791.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraybill, D.B. (1998) Plain reservations: Amish and Mennonite views of media and computers. Journal of Mass Media Ethics 13, 99–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Ferrara, E., Chong, A. and Duryea, S. (2012) Soap operas and fertility: evidence from Brazil. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 4, 1–31.Google Scholar
Lee, R. (2015) Becker and the demographic transition. Journal of Demographic Economics 81, 67–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R.D. and Mason, A. (2011) Generational economics in a changing world. Population and Development Review 37, 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, B. (2013) International Historical Statistics, pp. 1750–2010. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave/Macmillan.Google Scholar
Montagu, J. (1994) Length of life in the ancient world: a controlled study. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 87, 25.Google ScholarPubMed
Newson, L., Postmes, T., Lea, S., Webley, P., Richerson, P.J. and McElreath, R. (2007) Influences on communication about reproduction: the cultural evolution of low fertility. Evolution and Human Behavior 28, 199–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robson, A.J. and Kaplan, H.S. (2003) The evolution of human life expectancy and intelligence in hunter–gatherer economies. American Economic Review 93(1), 150–169.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spolaore, E. and Wacziarg, R. (2019) Fertility and Modernity. Working Paper 25957. National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1999) The human adaptation for culture. Annual Review of Anthropology 28, 509–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Bavel, J. (2004) Diffusion effects in the European fertility transition: historical evidence from within a Belgian town (1846–1910). European Journal of Population/Revue Europeenne de Demographie 20, 63–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, A.Z., Ronen, S., Hu, K., Lu, T. and Hidalgo, C.A. (2016) Pantheon 1.0, a manually verified dataset of globally famous biographies. Scientific Data 3, 150075.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zakharenko, R. (2016a) Endogenous growth and demographic transition in a model of cultural transmission. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 26, 953–970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zakharenko, R. (2016b) Nothing else matters: evolution of preference for social prestige. Mathematical Social Sciences 80, 58–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar