Did Children's Education Matter? Family Migration as a Mechanism of Human Capital Investment: Evidence from Nineteenth Century Bohemia

This article analyses the rural–urban migration of families in the Bohemian region of Pilsen in 1900. Using a new 1,300-family dataset from the 1900 population census, the role of children's education in rural–urban migration is examined. The findings indicate that families migrated to the city such that the educational attainment of their children would be maximized, and that there is a positive correlation between family migration and children being apprentices in urban areas. The results suggest that rural–urban migration was powered not only by the exploitation of rural–urban wage gaps but also by aspirations to engage in human capital investment