The Value of Children During Industrialization: Sex Ratios in Childhood in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

Sex ratios in childhood in nineteenth-century America were skewed, with a relative excess of males in agricultural and frontier areas, and the reverse in urban and industrial areas. The pattern is consistent at the state, county, and (where data are available) community and household levels. The most likely con tributing causes are sex-specific migration of families according to the mix of their children, migration of children themselves, and mortality patterns arising from differential childcare based on the sex-specific economic value of children to the household in agricultural versus urban settings. These patterns confirm similar ones observed in developing countries and in the British Isles under condi tions of early agricultural modernization, in which the relative value of female labor declines in agricultural zones.

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