Abstract: This research identifies the origins of the early demographic transition in eighteenth-century France. A turning point in history and an essential condition for development, the demographic transition first took hold in France more than a hundred years before any other country—and this event remains one of the ''big questions of history'' because of its timing and limited data availability. My results suggest that secularization accounts for the decline in fertility. I document an important and early process of dechristianization with never-b...
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Topics: 
Economic geography
Development economics