Historical Demography. Understanding Temporal Change, Individual Variation and Regional Persistence

Abstract

This chapter links recent Dutch and Belgian research in historical demography to on-going debates and emerging trends in the fi eld at large. It starts with the perennial -but always fascinating -discussion on how to make sense of the demographic transition, an extremely complex subject. The discussion is currently moving to the wild fl uctuations in fertility in the twentieth century, as well as to other changes known as the 'Second Demographic Transition'. Following this, I discuss how historical demographers are making sense of the huge individual variations they uncover in demographic behaviourincluding family composition, religion, social class and locality. One strategy is to compare and thus control for context in comparative research designs. Another is to try to locate 'universal' elements in demographic behaviour, such as transmitted physiological components. Finally, I show how the concept of long-term traditional, macro-regional family systems is being put to use in contemporary research.

Introduction

“…41 As opposed to the numerous demographic studies on individual variations in fertility in the past, less research has been done on individual-level mortality. 42 Although social inequalities in death are currently high on the historical agenda, little attention is paid to the underlying medical causes of death. 43 This oversight is mostly related to a lack of adequate data.…”

Patterns of spatial proximity and the timing and spacing of bearing children

“…They are part of a wider system of organizational principles that relate to regional patterns of household and family formation, what we call family systems (Hajnal 1982;Reher 1998;Skinner 1997;Faragó 1998;Szołtysek 2008). Family systems have been identified as a useful concept to explain regional variation in fertility (Burch and Gendell 1970;Hajnal 1982;Dyson and Moore 1983;Das Gupta 1997;Veleti 2001;Mason 2001;Neven 2002;Delger 2003;Dalla-Zuanna and Micheli 2004;Rotering and Bras 2015) and the persistence of regional demographic traits (Kok 2009(Kok , 2014. However, the majority of the empirical research studying how family systems shape people's demographic decision-making has focused on historical and developing societies and has often been limited to only a small number of regions and countries (e.g., Hajnal 1982;Das Gupta 1997: 181;Veleti 2001;Rotering and Bras 2015 2 ; for an exception see Kok 2009, who focuses on extra-marital fertility).…”