Malthus predicted that fertility rises with income and that people regulate fertility via regulating marriage. However, evidence on the Malthusian equilibrium has been mostly confined to Europe and East Asia. We employ Egypt's population censuses of 1848 and 1868 to provide the first evidence on the preindustrial Malthusian dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa. At the aggregate level, we document rural Egyptian women having a high fertility rate that is close to the Western European level, combined with low age at marriage and low celibacy rate, that are closer to the East Asian levels. This resulted in a uniquely high fertility regime that was probably offset by the high child mortality. Next, we provide individual-level evidence on the positive correlation between fertility and income (occupation). We find that the higher fertility of rural white-collar men is attributed to their marriage behaviour, and not to marital fertility. Specifically, white-collar men's higher polygyny explains 45 per cent of their fertility advantage, whereas their higher marriage rate and lower wife's age at marriage explains 55 per cent. Therefore, polygyny was an additional factor that led to a steeper income–fertility curve than in Western Europe by enabling the rural middle class to out-breed the poor.

中文翻译：

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中东婚姻模式？十九世纪埃及的马尔萨斯动力学

马尔萨斯预测，生育率随着收入的增加而上升，人们通过调节婚姻来调节生育率。然而，马尔萨斯均衡的证据主要局限于欧洲和东亚。我们利用埃及 1848 年和 1868 年的人口普查来提供有关中东和北非工业化前马尔萨斯动态的第一个证据。在总体水平上，我们记录了埃及农村妇女的高生育率，接近西欧水平，同时结婚年龄低，独身率低，接近东亚水平。这导致了独特的高生育率，但可能被高儿童死亡率所抵消。接下来，我们提供了生育率与收入（职业）之间正相关的个人层面的证据。我们发现，农村白领男性的较高生育率归因于他们的婚姻行为，而不是婚姻生育率。具体而言，白领男性较高的一夫多妻制解释了其生育优势的 45%，而他们较高的结婚率和较低的妻子结婚年龄则解释了 55% 的优势。因此，一夫多妻制是导致农村中产阶级的生育能力超过穷人的另一个因素，导致收入-生育率曲线比西欧更为陡峭。