Volume V, Issue 2, 2011
Abstract
An increase in illegitimacy ratios happened all over Europe in the middle of the 17th century and kept on, at least until 1850. A decrease followed up to the 1960s, when a second demographic transition appeared. In previous studies, the author suggested that non egalitarian family transmission systems could explain why some European regions, together with a high age at first marriage, used to present particularly high rate of illegitimacy in the past, when non-inheriting young people, males and females were often employed in domestic service and faced impediments or delays to establish an independent household and get married. Further in this line, taking account of family systems and socio-demographic and economic changes, the paper strongly suggests that the long trend in European illegitimacy figures should be considered in connection with a parallel dropping tendency in the frequency of domestic service: the innovating argument that the post-1850 decline in illegitimacy should be considered as linked to the declining attraction of traditional European models of domestic service brings a kind of missing key to a 40 year-old problem (Shorter, Knodel et Van de Walle 1971).
Keywords
Illegitimacy, domestic service, life-cycle service, marriage, celibacy, fertility, demographic transition, house, single heir, family strategies, labour market, migration, Roman-Catholic, Protestant, Alps, Pyrenees.
Abstract
Marital fertility in Norway dropped almost 50% between 1890 and1930. This fundamental change in peoples behaviour came about through no political initiative from above, in fact it took place in spite of public policy. Thousands of families changed behaviour in their intimate private life. The social elite traditionally had the highest fertility, cottars the lowest, and farmers were situated in a middling position. The elite pioneered the change. They seem to have lowered their fertility from the marriage cohorts of the 1840s onwards. The decline in the national figures is visible from c. 1900. This astounding break with customary behaviour may be explained on the background of the mortality decline from the early 1800s onwards and modernisation trends in general.
Keywords
European Fertility Project at Princeton University, qualitative and quantitative approach, interviews, means and methods
Abstract
GAFP (Graz Austrian Fertility Project, funded by Austrian Science Fund, 2009-2012, P 21157-G15) investigates the processes occurring within First Demographic Transition in Eastern and South Eastern Austria from 1869 to 1937, including the Austrian Crownlands of Lower Austria (incl. Vienna), Styria (incl. Slovenian regions), Carinthia, Carniola, Gorizia/Primorska, Trieste , Istria and the (Hungarian) Burgenland until 1918 and the Austrian provinces of Vienna, Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia and the Burgenland until 1937. This area in Central Europe, situated alongside Hajnal-line, still is less considered in comparison to the research on other European regions, especially in the more West or in the North of the continent. The main strategies are to consider a low aggregated spatial level (Political Districts) first and second interdependencies among different structural factors like occupational issues, taxes, savings, agricultural ecotype, illiteracy etc. and demographic factors (fertility, mortality and morbidity, nuptiality, migration). On the one hand there do exist some local studies, but they are heavily comparable, because of the spatial distances and due to the fact, that on this low level only a few structural data are available. On the other hand PEFP (Princeton European Fertility Project) and other studies have considered only higher aggregated levels like Crownlands and provinces. Howsoever, there did exist heavy systemic and structural differences between smaller regions within these Crownlands and provinces, which obviously have influenced demographic processes massively. This paper will present basic, micro-regional oriented, multivariate results (from cluster analysis) and concepts of assessing fertility in a micro-spatial context from GAFP.
Keywords
Spatial fertility decline, Cisleithania, First Demographic Transition.
Abstract
Theory and the results of many empirical studies show that infant mortality is highly clustered with a relative small number of families accounting for a large proportion of all infant deaths in the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. In this article we analyze infant mortality, especially the social phenomenon called death clustering: Is the infant mortality explained by death clustering in some families or are there other patterns of explanation responsible mechanisms active? The data for the analysis are taken from parish registers, covering especially lumberjack families in a small region called Frein an der Mürz in Styria, Austria (n = 1033 births). Based on these data the demographic biographies of mothers are generated and the hypothesis of death clustering is tested. The allocation of infant death to single families responsible mothers is the most important criterion in the analysis. It is very important to consider the number of children and births, the order of birth, the age of the mother etc. in the given social context of lumberjack families. In a further step the results of the analysis for Frein an der Mürz will be compared with the results of another Styria community region, namely Wald am Schoberpass (Teibenbacher 2010). This paper was elaborated within GAFP
Keywords
Historical demography; first demographic transition; infant and child mortality; death clustering, alpine regions; Styria.
Abstract
From the second half of the 19th century infant mortality in the Habsburg Empire begins to decline sustainable. Although many studies have been carried out on the decline of infant mortality in Europe, only little is known about the survival conditions of infants in the region of Central-Cisleithania and the few analysis that are existing are not considering the so-called export of infant mortality. Nevertheless, it is possible to a certain degree, to consider the export. This paper shows the regional differences and the decline of infant mortality by taking the export of foundlings into account. The attempt is made to clarify the reasons for the regional differences as well as the decline. This paper was elaborated within GAFP.
Keywords
Austria, infant mortality, foundlings, export, breast-feeding
Abstract
In this article, we present the first results of a new approach to the study of survival chances of Dutch children born between 1863 and 1909 (N=30157). We take a snapshot of the household composition at 90-days intervals and relate that to survival chances of the children, using a generalized linear model. We look at the impact of different types of co-resident kin, after controlling for many variables that also affect child survival. The results suggest a strong positive effect of the mothers mother and the fathers father, as well as of older siblings. Significant positive effects were also found for fathers mother and for uncles. Our outcomes suggest that adding the presence of family members of different type to the commonly used covariates yields a more complete picture of infant and child well-being.
Keywords
Infant mortality, grandmother hypothesis, households, kinship, Netherlands