No abstract

The reconstruction of the marriage market from imperfect records is solved by the minimization of a distance to the observations under civil status-specific McKendrick dynamics. To do this, the completion each year of the distribution of ages of bride and groom is also obtained by minimization under the constraints of recorded table margins, avoiding the recourse to ad hoc stylized functions. An empirical case study is presented using data from an administrative subdivision in southern Russia for the period 1867-1916.

The Don Army Territory in southern Russia from 1867 to 1916 offers a unique opportunity to follow mortality variations across religious denominations (Orthodox, Old Believers and Coreligionists, Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Armenian-Gregorians, Buddhists, and Muslims) in a context of severe climatic conditions, urbanization, economic mutations, and improvements in hygiene and medicine. Denominational groups were differentiated by ways of life, residential segmentation, hygiene practices, and medical knowledge. The most educated and urban denominations had the lowest mortality. Religions determined mortality patterns, doing duty for nonexistent or scarce physicians among the Orthodox, laying down rules of hygiene, and promoting doctrine on fertility and child care.

The quality of the statistical archives of the Don Army Territory for the period 1867–1916 offers a unique opportunity to compare the denominations present (Orthodox, Old Believers and Coreligionists, Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Armenian-Gregorians, Lamaist Buddhists and Muslims) in a context of urbanisation, secularisation and industrialisation. The observance of religious interdicts varied between and within denominations depending on levels of urbanisation and the district considered. These contrasts reveal the segmentation of Don society, the constraints imposed by agrarian imperatives and military obligations, the differences in the economy and between town and country, and the advance of secularisation or persistence of tradition.

For last 30 years Russian science and education system has been experiencing constant, profound institutional transformation in order to increase the quality of education, it's access ability and with a point to encrease the effectiveness of science. This article is devoted to the attempt to analysis the results of undertaken reforms and evaluating the quality of economic institutions which coordinate the order of market agents of researching field. The analysis of narratives approach was chosen with the intention for estimating the quality of reforms undertaken. Narratives are defined to be stories in direct speech of actors themselves of researching field: professors, students, Master's and graduated students of all forms of education, as soon as scientists and researchers of universities and research institutes and different levels of responsibility and competencies administrators. The "Integrum" database taken as the main source of information for searching for narratives. This informational base consists of 1250 Russian newspapers (federal and regional) and 500 journals which help us to select 250 narratives (stories in direct speech) of people who are directly involved in transformational process of education system and science being studied. The obtained results pointed out the number of stable ineffective rules and practices which have a negative impact on our researching area functioning and also made it possible to classify out a few groups of institutional traps such as: metric's trap, trap of raising level of bureacracy, trap of shortage of finansing, electronization and digitalization trap and trap of staff capacity. Each determined trap reflected in the article is also pointed out and argued with selected narratives.