I know that the debate about fish and migration means that we no longer talk to the French these days, but still allow to think about their history.
A huge historical mystery is why France has undergone a demographic transition to reduce the fertility rate since the 1760s a century earlier than other countries. EuropeThis is a difficult problem because economists generally believe that the decline in fertility is driven by technological progress, which makes human capital more useful and raises the cost of children. But before the revolution, France fell behind in most development measures, and the literacy rate in England and Wales was only half.
An interesting paper crowdsourcing genealogy to provide the answer: secularization. Dechristianisation made the Roman Catholic Church lose its influence in the 18th century France, With the decrease of religious donations and the mention of God disappeared from the will. The relaxation of traditional religious moral constraints has also led to the wider use of contraceptive measures. Interrupted sexual intercourse type).
The author shows that during the French Revolution, areas where priests remained loyal to Catholicism (that is, areas with less progress in secularization) had a much smaller decline in fertility. Religion rather than economic changes promoted the demographic transition, but it had huge economic consequences: declining fertility was a prerequisite for improving living standards (or progress being swallowed by population growth). This is why although the Industrial Revolution is taking place on this side of the English Channel, France’s GDP per capita is still keeping pace with that of the United Kingdom. For the French, the story is that there are fewer churches, fewer children, and higher incomes.
