Speaker
Description
Colonization has profoundly impacted the economic and financial development trajectory in the colonized countries. However, previous work has not yet explored the impact of colonization on present-day fertility outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper investigates the influence of colonial legacy on fertility through colonial legal institutions and the identity of the colonizer. Europeans differed not just in the legal institutions they transplanted in their colonies but also in their colonial administrative policies. I use the random splitting of ethnic homelands by the colonizers in 21 SSA countries as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of colonial institutions and policies on current fertility in SSA. I find that the colonizer’s identity plays a major role in explaining current fertility outcomes. Countries colonized by Britain have nearly 19.3 percent lower fertility than those colonized by France. Lastly, I show that this differential persists through restrictive access to contraception in French colonies, a feature resulting from France’s colonial 1920 law, which sought to deter contraception use and promote fertility.
| Keyword | Gender Economics |
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