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.