Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
In this article we investigate the relation between population and real wages in the Italian economy during the period 1320-1870. The main result is that the positive check is strong and statistically significant but the other equilibrating mechanism in the Malthusian model - the preventive check - based on the positive relationship between fertility and real wages does not operate in pre-industrial Italy. In contrast to the Malthusian hypothesis, we find a negative feedback from wage to population. The empirical result is clearly consistent with the theoretical framework of the "old age security motive". We show, with a simple overlapping-generation model, that by allowing for substitution in a pre-industrial economy between child quantity and other assets (such as new seeds, better soybean quality, and new cultivation and irrigation methods) fertility may be negatively affected whenever income rises.