Accounting for child mortality in the pre-industrial European economy

Different factors are often assigned an important role in the emergence of modern growth, such as the relationship between demographic factors and changes in institutions that promote innovation, the production of new ideas, the development of education or improvements in technology. In this paper we examine a basic factor, the probability of child survival. We find a negative relationship between child mortality and birth rate. Our results conflict with works which argue that with stochastic mortality a large precautionary demand for children arises, which would lead to mortality decline having a negative effect on net fertility.