Q2. Why did the Dutch experience high wages and living standards?
Because of the favourable population-resource balance, survivors in thefifteenth century experienced high wages and living standards.
Q3. Why is a single cross-section used to analyse the phenomenon of interest?
Because forty years is a short time to allow variation in the phenomenon of interest, even when there is some panel data, a single cross-section is analysed first.
Q4. What is the reason why the marriage pattern faded?
With increasing pervasiveness of the state in the nineteenth century, publicprovision began to substitute for that of the family; the marriage pattern started to fade both for this reason and because of diffusion of other means of family limitation.
Q5. What is the definition of a modern commonplace?
A modern commonplace is that human capital drives economic growth (for example Mankiw Romer and Weil 1992 and Galor and Moav 2006).
Q6. Why does the proportion of girls not attending school negatively affect fertility?
Proportion of girls not attending school ten years earlier negatively impacts on fertility – perhaps because school attendance reflects lack of employment opportunities.
Q7. What is the effect of the instrumental variable estimation on birth rates?
Instrumental variable estimation allows for the possibility that birth rate or literacy respond to age at marriage as well as age at marriage being chosen with target births in mind.
Q8. What is the effect of harvest failures on the mortality of the more vulnerable members of society?
At low standards of living harvest failures reduces the real wage so that the mortality rises of the more vulnerable members of society.
Q9. What is the average age of marriage in English counties?
In English counties age at first marriage of women born between 1826 and 1841, and married between 1841 and 1861, ranged from 25.8 to 23.0 (Crafts 1978)18.
Q10. What was the lowest age of female marriage in Sicily?
In 1861 the lowestage of female marriage was in Catania, Sicily, at 20.4 years and the highest was 26.3 in Teramo, Abruzzo (Rettarolli 1992).
Q11. How is the proportion of women single affected by the illiteracy index?
Controlling for possible two-way causation and for schooling, proportion of women aged 25-29 single (and therefore age at marriage) is a statistically significant influence upon cross-national variations in literacy.
Q12. What is the link between high European age at marriage and Western European economic development?
Here then is a plausible prima facie (non-causal) link between high European age at marriage and Western European economic development; lower mortality requires fewer births, higher age at marriage and permits greater child quality, which in due course raises productivity and innovation.
Q13. What is the likelihood of a decline in population in western Europe?
The likelihood then is that population growth was triggered by mortalitydecline in Western Europe over the 15th and 16th centuries compared with earlier years, probably largely brought about by quarantine regulations (Slack 1981).
Q14. What is the critical variable in the relationship between the age at marriage and child quality?
The critical variable in this last relationship is age at marriage, here an index of family efficiency, independent of schooling.
Q15. What is the causal connection between a higher marriage age and a lower birth rate?
A causal connection is created when a longer term consequence of a highermarriage age is a fall in tq., an improvement in the efficiency of household investment in child quality.
Q16. What is the biggest effect of female human capital on births?
The biggest effect is from female human capital, that measuring the time cost of children (w.tn), female illiteracy (‘f1860’, ranging from 18 to 54 percent), where the 36 percent variation accounts for 7 births per 1000.
Q17. Why is the empirical model focusing on infrastructure?
To measure physical capital across European economies the empirical modelfocuses upon infrastructure because it was so capital-intensive.