This paper assesses the causal impact of greater market access on demographic transition during the latter half of the 19th century in the United States. We construct new measures of fertility changes and measures of railroad access at the county level from 1850 - 1890. We are able to document...

Enrico Bombieri proved that the ABC Conjecture implies Roth's theorem in 1994. This paper concerns the other direction. In making use of Bombieri's and Van der Poorten's explicit formula for the coefficients of the regular continued fractions of algebraic numbers, we prove that Roth's theorem...

Much has been written on gender inequality and how it affects fertility and mortality outcomes as well as economic outcomes. What is not well understood is the role of gender inequality, embedded in the behavior of the family, the market, and society, in mediating the impact of demographic...

By late 2011 there will be more than 7 billion people in the world, with 8 billion in 2025 and 9 billion before 2050. New technologies and institutions, and a lot of hard work have enabled us to avoid widespread Malthusian misery. Global income per capita has increased 150 percent since 1960,...

This paper examines the relationship between population growth and economic growth in developing countries from 1965 to 1985. Our results indicate that developing countries were able to shift their labor force from low-productivity agriculture to the higher-productivity industry and service...

The economies of the less developed countries are about to face perhaps the greatest challenge in their histories: generating a sufficient number of jobs at reasonable wages to absorb their rapidly growing populations into productive employment. In terms of absolute magnitude, this challenge has...

This paper reviews the evolution of the World Bank's strategies in the health, nutrition, and population (HNP) sector in relation to both internal and global events, as background for the forthcoming evaluation by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the Bank's support for HNP. It...