English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580–1837

by E. A. Wrigley , R. S. Davies , J. E. Oeppen , R. S. Schofield

• ISBN13: 9780521590150
• ISBN10: 0521590159
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-08-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580–1837 is the most important single contribution to English historical demography since Wrigley and Schofield’s Population History of England. It represents the culmination of work carried out at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure over the past quarter-century. Both books use Anglican parish registers to illuminate the population history of England between the sixteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century for which period they are the prime source available. This second work demonstrates the value of the technique of family reconstitution as a means of obtaining accurate and detailed information about fertility, morality, and nuptiality in the past. Indeed, more is now known about many aspects of English demography in the parish register period than about the post-1837 period when the Registrar-General collected and published information. Using data from 26 parishes, the authors show clearly that their results are representative not only of the demographic situation of the parishes from which the data were drawn, but also of the country as a whole. While the book largely confirms the earlier findings of the Cambridge Group, many novel and some very surprising features of the behaviour of past populations are brought to light for the first time.

Table of Contents

List of figures	xii	(4)
List of tables	xvi
PART I	3	(118)
1 Introduction	3	(16)
The scope of the present study	4	(2)
The origins of the present study	6	(6)
Family reconstitution and the estimation of the demographic characteristics of a population	12	(5)
The organisation of the book	17	(2)
2 The reconstitution parishes	19	(21)
The set of reconstitution parishes	20	(4)
The start and finish problem	24	(4)
The characteristics of the individual parishes	28	(1)
The 8 parishes rejected	29	(1)
The final set of 26 parishes	30	(10)
3 Representativeness	40	(33)
The occupational structure of the reconstitution parishes	41	(12)
A comparison of national totals of events and totals from the parish groups	53	(17)
Baptisms	57	(6)
Burials	63	(4)
Marriages	67	(3)
What the tests of representativeness suggest	70	(1)
Changes in the relative importance of parishes	71	(2)
4 Reliability	73	(48)
Indirect evidence from totals of events in the reconstitution parishes	74	(13)
Coverage of events in Anglican registers	87	(4)
The completeness of Anglican registration in the reconstituted parishes	91	(1)
Reconstitution data and the Registrar-General's early returns	92	(18)
Infant and child mortality	93	(4)
Fertility	97	(1)
Nuptiality	98	(1)
Internal consistency and demographic plausibility	98	(1)
The evidence of the mid-nineteenth-century enumerators' books	109	(1)
Delayed baptism and dummy births	110	(6)
The processing of data taken from FRFs	116	(1)
Conclusion	117	(4)
PART II	121	(394)
5 Nuptiality	121	(77)
The special characteristics of the reconstitution marriage data	126	(2)
Nuptiality trends and characteristics	128	(11)
The frequency distribution of age at marriage in bachelor/spinster marriages	139	(9)
Other marriage rank combinations	148	(3)
The age gap between spouses	151	(3)
Marriage ages from reconstitution compared with the Registrar-General's returns	154	(6)
Sources of bias in the estimation of age at marriage	160	(4)
The changing relative frequency of different marriage rank combinations	164	(2)
Marriage age and birth parity	166	(5)
Remarriage	171	(11)
Parochial trends and characteristics	182	(12)
Conclusion	194	(4)
6 Mortality	198	(156)
Mortality and economic circumstances	201	(5)
Mortality, social conventions, and life styles	206	(4)
The reconstitution data and techniques of analysis	210	(4)
Infant and child mortality	214	(66)
Overall patterns of infant and child mortality	214	(3)
Infant mortality	217	(25)
The mortality of multiple births	242	(6)
Mortality in childhood	248	(13)
Age patterns of mortality and model life tables	261	(2)
Short-term changes in infant and child mortality	263	(5)
Infant and child mortality in individual parishes	268	(12)
Adult mortality	280	(13)
Overall mortality	293	(5)
Male and female mortality	298	(3)
Infancy and childhood	298	(3)
Adulthood	301	(6)
Maternal mortality	307	(15)
Seasonal mortality	322	(25)
General patterns	322	(11)
The first two years of life	333	(7)
The seasonal concentration of death	340	(3)
Unconventional age divisions within the first two years of life	343	(4)
Conclusion	347	(7)
7 Fertility	354	(161)
The evidence from completed marriages	357	(45)
The measurement of fecundity and fertility	357	(4)
The duration of fecundity	361	(11)
The variables determining fertility	372	(3)
Change in the components of fertility over time	375	(23)
Duration of marriage effects on fertility rates	398	(1)
Parity progression ratios	398	(4)
Particular influences on fertility characteristics	402	(28)
Fertility and mortality	402	(10)
The fertility of different marriage rank combinations	412	(5)
Fertility and age difference between spouses	417	(4)
Prenuptially conceived births	421	(6)
Fertility and `occupation'	427	(3)
Long-run trends	430	(34)
Birth intervals and long-run fertility trends	430	(19)
Conventional age-specific marital fertility rates	449	(8)
The `natural fertility' question	457	(4)
The credibility of fertility estimates derived from parish registers	461	(3)
Fecundability	464	(37)
The concept of fecundability	464	(1)
Fecundability measured by the interval from marriage to first birth	465	(7)
Change over time	472	(5)
Fecundability later in marriage	477	(15)
Other aspects of fecundability	492	(3)
Fecundability by parity	495	(2)
An alternative method of measuring fecundability later in marriage	497	(4)
The individual parishes	501	(6)
Conclusion	507	(8)
PART III	515	(46)
8 Reconstitution and inverse projection	515	(30)
Generalised inverse projection and back projection	515	(5)
Revised input data	520	(11)
The effect of the new data on demographic estimates	531	(2)
Changing the input parameters	533	(1)
Mean age at maternity	533	(2)
The age structure of mortality	535	(2)
Other input parameters	537	(2)
The new GIP estimates and reconstitution	539	(6)
9 Conclusion	545	(16)
APPENDICES	561	(62)
1 A list of the reconstituted parishes from which data were drawn and of the names of those who carried out the reconstitutions	561	(2)
2 Examples of the slips and forms used in reconstitution and a description of the system of weights and flags employed	563	(6)
3 Truncation bias and similar problems	569	(5)
4 Tests for logical errors in reconstitution data	574	(4)
5 Correcting for a `missing' parish in making tabulations of marriage age	578	(3)
6 The estimation of adult mortality	581	(20)
7 Adjusting mortality rates taken from the four groups to form a single series	601	(9)
Infant and child mortality	601	(1)
Adult mortality	602	(8)
8 The calculation of the proportion of women still fecund at any given age	610	(3)
9 Summary of quinquennial demographic data using revised aggregative data and produced by generalised inverse projection	613	(4)
10 Selection criteria used in compiling the tables in chapters 5 to 7	617	(6)
Bibliography	623	(12)
Name index	635	(3)
Place index	638	(3)
Subject index	641