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U.S. states gave economic rights to married women between 1850
and 1920. Prior to this “women’s liberation,” the laws of coverture
granted virtually unlimited power to husbands. Using the full count
U.S. census and county-border pairs, we use an event-study analysis to show that rights reduced fertility. Additionally, women’s
rights were not granted retroactively, allowing us to compare people married before and after the reforms, confirming our findings.
Shifting bargaining power accounts for our results, with spousal disagreement over fertility plausibly due to maternal mortality risk.
Women’s empowerment explains about 18% of the decline in fertility during the demographic transition.
