Historical evidence on a modern theory of out-of-wedlock childbearing

Abstract

According to Willis (1999), when women outnumber men in a marriage market, out-of-wedlock births increase as women’s incomes rise in real terms and relative to men’s. These predictions are born out in 19th century Swedish data; exogenous shocks that raised women’s real and relative earnings increased the share of births to single mothers. The results are consistent with theory and quantitatively significant; increases in women’s real and relative wages in the unskilled agricultural sector explain sixty-four percent of the increase in births outside of wedlock in Sweden from 1865–1910.