Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa: The role of inheritance, with Sébastien Fontenay, and Marc Goñi

Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa is the highest in the world and it should
continue boosting population growth for decades to come. In this paper,

we showcase a new driver of fertility decisions that has been largely over-
looked by demographers and economists: inheritance rules. In particular,

we demonstrate that impartible inheritance (i.e. transmission of the de-
ceased’s property to a single heir) does not incentivize households to limit

their number of children. Our main empirical strategy links data from the
past on deep-rooted inheritance customs for more than 800 ethnic groups
with modern demographic surveys covering 24 countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa. Our spatial Regression Discontinuity Design exploiting ancestral

borders reveals that belonging to an ethnic group with impartible inher-
itance customs increases fertility by 0.85 children per woman. We also

establish, both theoretically and empirically, that the fertility differences
across inheritance rules are larger in lands that are less labor intensive.