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来源类型 | Discussion paper |
规范类型 | 论文 |
来源ID | DP13178 |
DP13178 Child Care and Human Development: Insights from Jewish History in Central and Eastern Europe, 1500–1930 | |
Zvi Eckstein; Maristella Botticini | |
发表日期 | 2018-09-13 |
出版年 | 2018 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | Economists growingly highlight the fundamental role that human capital formation, institutions, cultural transmission, and religious norms may each distinctively play in shaping health, knowledge, and wealth. We contribute to this debate by studying one of the most remarkable instances in which religious norms and child care practices had a major impact on demographic and economic patterns: the history of the Jews in central and eastern Europe from 1500 to 1930. After documenting that the Jewish population in Poland Lithuania increased at a strikingly high annual rate of 1.37 percent during this period, we investigate the engines of this exceptional growth. We show that while Jewish and non-Jewish birth rates were about the same, infant and child mortality among Jews was much lower and account for the main difference (70 percent) in Jewish versus non-Jewish natural population growth. Our contribution stems from documenting that Jewish families routinely adopted childcare practices that recent medical research has shown as enhancing infants’ and children’s well-being. These practices, deeply rooted in Talmudic rulings, account for the lower infant and child mortality among Jews, and in turn, for the higher Jewish population growth rate in eastern and central Europe between 1500 and 1930. The key insight of our work is that once Judaism became a “literate religion,” infant and child care, as well as enhancing offspring’s’ cognitive skills, became focal activities of Jewish households. |
主题 | Economic History ; Labour Economics |
关键词 | Infant mortality Jewish history Population growth Religious norms Eastern europe Child care |
URL | https://cepr.org/publications/dp13178 |
来源智库 | Centre for Economic Policy Research (United Kingdom) |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/541982 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Zvi Eckstein,Maristella Botticini. DP13178 Child Care and Human Development: Insights from Jewish History in Central and Eastern Europe, 1500–1930. 2018. |
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