Abstract
This article deals with the possible existence of deliberate fertility control before the fertility transition. The timing of the fertility response to economic stress, as measured by fluctuations in grain prices, is used as a measure of deliberate, but non-parity specific, control. Birth histories from six German villages (1766–1863), including information on occupation of the husband, are used together with community-wide grain price series in a micro-level event-history analysis. The results show a negative fertility response to grain prices both in the year immediately following the price change, and with a 1-year lag. The response was also highly different between socioeconomic groups, with the most pronounced effects among the unskilled laborers. Moreover, the response in this group was very rapid, already present 3–6 months after the price change. As all involuntary fertility responses to economic hardship (e.g., malnutrition, spousal separation, and spontaneous abortion) come with a considerable time lag, the existence of such a rapid response among the lower social groups suggests that individual agency (deliberate control) was an important aspect of reproductive behavior also before the fertility transition.
Résumé
Cet article s’intéresse à l’existence possible d’un contrôle volontaire des naissances avant la transition de la fécondité. Le calendrier de l’évolution de la fécondité en fonction de la tension économique, mesurée par les fluctuations du prix des céréales, est utilisé comme mesure de contrôle volontaire des naissances, mais non lié à la parité. Des histoires génésiques comprenant la catégorie professionnelle du père, provenant de six villages allemands (1766-1863), sont utilisées en association avec des séries temporelles des prix des céréales au niveau communautaire pour effectuer une analyse biographique au niveau individuel. Les résultats indiquent une évolution négative de la fécondité en fonction du prix des céréales, à la fois dans l’année qui suit le changement de prix et l’année d’après. Cette évolution était très variable en fonction du groupe social, avec un effet maximal parmi les travailleurs non qualifiés. De plus, la réaction dans ce dernier groupe était très rapide, car déjà visible 3 à 6 mois après le changement de prix. Sachant que toutes les modifications involontaires de fécondité face aux difficultés économiques (par exemple à la malnutrition, aux ruptures conjugales, et aux avortements spontanés) ne se produisent qu’après un délai très long, l’existence d’une réaction si rapide parmi les groupes sociaux les plus défavorisés laisse penser que l’initiative individuelle (contrôle volontaire) était déjà, avant la transition de la fécondité, un aspect important du comportement reproducteur.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Information about the collection and the characteristics of the Ortssippenbucher is provided in Chap. 2 of Knodel (1988). These data were digitized and archived by the Population Studies Center of the University of Michigan. On the website of the Population Studies Center it is possible to download further documentation: http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/data/.
The website of the History of Work Information System contains documentation, bibliography and information about both the historical international classification of occupations (HISCO) and the social class scheme HISCLASS: http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/index.php. The classification into HISCLASS was made using the recode job: hisco_hisclass12a_@.inc, May 2004, see http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/list_pub.php?categories=hisclass.
Prices were collected by David Jacks and all data is available online at: http://www.sfu.ca/~djacks/data/prices/prices.html (see also Jacks 2004, 2005).
The estimations were made using the ‘eha’ package in R, developed by Göran Broström at the Department of Statistics, Umeå University, specifically designed to estimate this kind of combined time-series and individual survival model. Previous analyses have shown that estimations assuming Gamma distributed frailty produce the same results (see Bengtsson and Dribe 2006).
References
Abel, W. (1980). Agricultural fluctuations in Europe from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. London: Methuen & Co.
Anderton, D. L., & Bean, L. L. (1985). Birth spacing and fertility limitation: A behavioral analysis of a nineteenth century frontier population. Demography, 22(2), 169–183.
Ashley, W. (1921). The place of rye in the history of English food. Economic Journal, 31(123), 285–308.
Bean, L. L., Mineau, G. P., & Anderton, D. L. (1990). Fertility change on the American frontier. Adaptation and innovation. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press.
Bengtsson, T. (1993). A re-interpretation of population trends and cycles in England, France and Sweden, 1751–1860. Histoire & Mesure, 8(1/2), 93–115.
Bengtsson, T., & Dribe, M. (2006). Deliberate control in a natural fertility population: Southern Sweden, 1766–1864. Demography, 43(4), 727–746.
Bengtsson, T., & Dribe, M. (2010). Economic stress and reproductive responses. In N. O. Tsuya, F. Wang, G. Alter, & J. Z. Lee (Eds.), Prudence and pressure. Reproduction and human agency in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900 (pp. 97–127). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bengtsson, T., & Ohlsson, R. (1985). Age-specific mortality and short-term changes in the standard of living: Sweden, 1751–1859. European Journal of Population, 1(4), 309–326.
Bongaarts, J. (1980). Does malnutrition affect fecundity? A summary of evidence. Science, 208(4444), 564–569.
Brown, J. C., & Guinnane, T. W. (2002). Fertility transition in a rural, Catholic population: Bavaria, 1880–1910. Population Studies, 56(1), 35–50.
Brown, J. C., & Guinnane, T. W. (2007). Regions and time in the European fertility transition: Problems in the Princeton project’s statistical methodology. Economic History Review, 60(3), 574–595.
Cleland, J., & Wilson, C. (1987). Demand theories of the fertility transition: An iconoclastic view. Population Studies, 41(1), 5–30.
Coale, A. J., & Trussell, J. T. (1974). Model fertility schedules: Variations in the age schedule of childbearing in human populations. Population Index, 40(2), 185–258.
Coale, A. J., & Trussell, J. T. (1978). Technical note: Finding the two parameters that specify a model schedule of marital fertility. Population Index, 44(2), 203–213.
Coale, A. J., & Watkins, S. C. (Eds.). (1986). The decline of fertility in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Crafts, N. F. R. (1989). Duration of marriage, fertility and women’s employment opportunities in England and Wales in 1911. Population Studies, 43(2), 325–335.
David, H. P., Fleishhacker, J., & Höhn, C. (1988). Abortion and eugenics in Nazi Germany. Population and Development Review, 14(1), 81–112.
David, P. A., & Mroz, T. A. (1989a). Evidence of fertility regulation among rural French villagers, 1749–1789. A sequential econometric model of birth-spacing behavior (part 1). European Journal of Population, 5(1), 1–26.
David, P. A., & Mroz, T. A. (1989b). Evidence of fertility regulation among rural French villagers, 1749–1789. A sequential econometric model of birth-spacing behavior (part 2). European Journal of Population, 5(2), 173–206.
David, P. A., & Sanderson, W. C. (1986). Rudimentary contraceptive methods and the American transition to marital fertility control, 1855–1915. In S. L. Engerman & R. E. Gallman (Eds.), Long-term factors in American economic growth (pp. 307–390). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dribe, M. (2000). Leaving home in a peasant society. Economic fluctuations, household dynamics and youth migration in Southern Sweden, 1829–1867. Södertälje: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Dribe, M. (2003). Dealing with economic stress through migration: Lessons from nineteenth century rural Sweden. European Review of Economic History, 7(3), 271–299.
Dribe, M. (2009). Demand and supply factors in the fertility transition: A county level analysis of age-specific marital fertility in Sweden 1880–1930. European Review of Economic History, 13(1), 65–94.
Friedmann, H. (1978). World market, state, and family farm: Social bases of household production in the era of wage labor. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20(4), 545–586.
Frisch, R. E. (1978). Population, food intake, and fertility. Science, 199(4324), 22–30.
Galloway, P. R. (1988). Basic patterns in annual variations in fertility, nuptiality, mortality, and prices in pre-industrial Europe. Population Studies, 42(2), 275–303.
Galloway, P. R., Hammel, E. A., & Lee, R. D. (1994). Fertility decline in Prussia, 1875–1910: A pooled cross-section time series analysis. Population Studies, 48(1), 135–158.
Hagen, W. W. (1986). Working for the Junker: The standard of living of manorial laborers in Brandenburg, 1584–1810. Journal of Modern History, 58(1), 143–158.
Haines, M. R. (1989). American fertility in transition: New estimates of birth rates in the United States, 1900–1910. Demography, 26(1), 137–148.
Hammel, E. A., & Galloway, P. R. (2000). Structural and behavioral changes in the short-term preventive check in the northwest Balkans in the 18th and 19th centuries. European Journal of Population, 16(1), 67–108.
Henry, L. (1961). Some data on natural fertility. Eugenics Quarterly, 8, 81–91.
Hochstadt, S. (1981). Migration and industrialization in Germany, 1815–1977. Social Science History, 5(4), 445–468.
Hochstadt, S. (1983). Migration in pre-industrial Germany. Central European History, 16(3), 195–224.
Hodrick, R., & Prescott, E. (1997). Post-war U.S. business cycles: An empirical investigation. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 29(1), 1–16.
Jacks, D. S. (2004). Market integration in the North and Baltic seas, 1500–1800. Journal of European Economic History, 33(3), 285–329.
Jacks, D. S. (2005). Intra- and international commodity market integration in the Atlantic economy, 1800–1913. Explorations in Economic History, 42(3), 381–413.
Kasakoff, A. B., & Adams, J. W. (1995). The effect of migration on ages at vital events: A critique of family reconstitution in historical demography. European Journal of Population, 11(3), 199–242.
Knodel, J. (1977). Family limitation and the fertility transition: Evidence from the age patterns of fertility in Europe and Asia. Population Studies, 31(2), 219–249.
Knodel, J. (1978). Natural fertility in pre-industrial Germany. Population Studies, 32(3), 481–510.
Knodel, J. (1987). Starting, stopping, and spacing during the early stages of the fertility transition: The experience of German village populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Demography, 24(2), 143–162.
Knodel, J. E. (1988). Demographic behavior in the past. A study of fourteen German village populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, R. D. (1975). Natural fertility, population cycles and the spectral analysis of birth and marriages. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 70(350), 295–304.
Lee, R. D. (1981). Short-term variation: Vital rates, prices and weather. In E. A. Wrigley & R. S. Schofield (Eds.), The population history of England, 1541–1871. A Reconstruction (pp. 356–401). London: Edward Arnold.
McLaren, A. (1990). A history of contraception: From antiquity to the present. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Menken, J., Trussell, J. T., & Watkins, S. C. (1981). The nutrition fertility link: An evaluation of the evidence. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11(3), 425–441.
Morgan, S. P. (1991). Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century childlessness. American Journal of Sociology, 97(3), 779–807.
Mroz, T. A., & Weir, D. R. (1990). Structural change in life cycle fertility during the fertility transition: France before and after the revolution of 1789. Population Studies, 44(1), 61–87.
Reher, D., & Sanz-Gimeno, A. (2007). Rethinking historical reproductive change: Insights from longitudinal data for a Spanish town. Population and Development Review, 33(4), 703–727.
Richter, J. S. (1998). Infanticide, child abandonment, and abortion in Imperial Germany. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 28(4), 511–551.
Ruggles, S. (1992). Migration, marriage and mortality: Correcting sources of bias in English family reconstitutions. Population Studies, 46(3), 507–522.
Ruggles, S. (1999). The limitations of English family reconstitution: English population history from family reconstitution 1580–1837. Continuity and Change, 14(1), 105–130.
Rydberg, C., Kylberg, L. H., von Zweigbergk, G., & Ljung, E. W. (1919). Jordbrukslära för skolor och självstudium. Stockholm: Fritzes.
Santow, G. (1995). Coitus interruptus and the control of natural fertility. Population Studies, 49(1), 19–43.
Schultz, T. P. (1985). Changing world prices, women’s wages, and the fertility transition: Sweden, 1860–1910. Journal of Political Economy, 93(6), 1126–1154.
Scott, S., & Duncan, C. J. (2000). Interacting effects of nutrition and social class differentials on fertility and infant mortality in a preindustrial population. Population Studies, 54(1), 71–87.
Shorter, E. (1982). A history of women’s bodies. New York: Basic Books.
Skinner, G. W. (1997). Family systems and demographic processes. In D. I. Kertzer & T. E. Fricke (Eds.), Anthropological demography: Toward a new synthesis (pp. 53–59). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Szreter, S. (1996). Fertility, class and gender in Britain 1860–1940. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Therneau, T. M., & Grambsch, P. M. (2000). Modeling survival data. Extending the Cox model. New York: Springer.
Tsuya, N. O., Wang, F., Alter, G., & Lee, J. Z. (Eds.). (2010). Prudence and pressure. Reproduction and human agency in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ulbricht, O. (1985). The debate about foundling hospitals in enlightenment Germany: infanticide, illegitimacy and infant mortality rates. Central European History, 18(3/4), 211–256.
Utterström, G. (1957). Jordbrukets arbetare. Första delen. Stockholm: Tidens förlag.
Van Bavel, J. (2004). Deliberate birth spacing before the fertility transition in Europe: Evidence from nineteenth-century Belgium. Population Studies, 58(1), 95–107.
Van Bavel, J., & Kok, J. (2004). Birth spacing in the Netherlands. The effects of family composition, occupation and religion on birth intervals, 1820–1885. European Journal of Population, 20(2), 119–140.
Van de Putte, B. (2006). Social power and class formation in the nineteenth century. How to measure class from occupation? Paper for the European Social Science History Conference, Amsterdam, March 2006.
Van de Walle, E. (1997). Flowers and fruits: Two thousand years of menstrual regulation. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 28(2), 183–203.
Van de Walle, E. (1999). Towards a demographic history of abortion. Population: An English Selection, 11(1), 115–131.
Van de Walle, E. (2000). “Marvelous secrets”: Birth control in European short fiction, 1150–1650. Population Studies, 54(3), 321–330.
Van de Walle, E., & Muhsam, H. V. (1995). Fatal secrets and the French fertility transition. Population and Development Review, 21(2), 261–279.
Van Leeuwen, M. H. D., & Maas, I. (2005). Endogamy and social class in history: An overview. International Review of Social History, 50(Suppl.), 1–23.
Van Leeuwen, M. H. D., Maas, I., & Miles, A. (2002). HISCO. Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Weir, D. R. (1984). Life under pressure: France and England, 1670–1870. Journal of Economic History, 44(1), 27–47.
Wilson, C. (1984). Natural fertility in pre-industrial England, 1600–1799. Population Studies, 38(2), 225–240.
Wood, J. W. (1994). Dynamics of human reproduction. Biology, biometry, demography. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Woods, R. (2005). The measurement of historical trends in fetal mortality in England and Wales. Population Studies, 59(2), 147–162.
Wrigley, E. A. (1994). The effect of migration on the estimation of marriage age in family reconstitution studies. Population Studies, 48(1), 81–97.
Yong, C., & Wang, F. (2005). Famine, social disruption, and involuntary fetal loss: Evidence from Chinese survey data. Demography, 42(2), 301–322.
Acknowledgments
Financial support from the Linnaeus Centre for Economic Demography, Lund University is gratefully acknowledged.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dribe, M., Scalone, F. Detecting Deliberate Fertility Control in Pre-transitional Populations: Evidence from six German villages, 1766–1863. Eur J Population 26, 411–434 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-010-9208-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-010-9208-8
Keywords
- Deliberate fertility control
- Natural fertility
- Historical demography
- Cox proportional hazards model
- Economic stress