Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN SOCIAL DISCONTINUITY
Under the Consulting Editorship of:
CHARLES TILLY EDWARD SHORTER
University of Michigan University of Toronto
William A. Christian, Jr. Person and God in a Spanish Valley
Joel Samaha. Law and Order in Historical Perspective: The
Case of Elizabethan Essex
John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf. The Hidden Frontier: Ecology
and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley
Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern World-System: Capitalist
Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy
in the Sixteenth Century
John R. Gillis. Youth and History: Tradition and Change in
European Age Relations 1770 - Present
D. E. H. Russell. Rebellion, Revolution, and Armed Force: A
Comparative Study of Fifteen Countries with Special Em-
phasis on Cuba and South Africa
Kristian Hvidt. Flight to America: The Social Background of
300,000 Danish Emigrants
James Lang. Conquest and Commerce: Spain and England in
the Americas
Stanley H. Brandes. Migration, Kinship, and Community: Tra-
dition and Transition in a Spanish Village
Daniel Chirot. Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The
Creation of a Balkan Colony
Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider. Culture and Political
Economy in Western Sicily
Michael Schwartz. Radical Protest and Social Structure: The
Southern Farmers* Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880-1890
Ronald Demos Lee (Ed.). Population Patterns in the Past
In preparation
Dirk Hoerder. Crowd Action in Revolutionary Massachusetts,
1765-1780
David Levine. Family Formations in an Age of Nascent
Capitalism
Charles P. Cell. Revolution at Work: Mobilization Campaigns
in China
Harry W. Pearson. The Livelihood of Man by Karl Polanyi
POPULATION PATTERNS
IN THE PAST
Edited by
RONALD DEMOS LEE
Department of Economics and Population Studies Center
University of Michigan
In collaboration with
RICHARD A. EASTERLIN
Department of Economics and
Population Studies Center
University of Pennsylvania
PETER H. LINDERT
Department of Economics
University of Wisconsin
ETIENNE V AN DE WALLE
Population Studies Center
University of Pennsylvania
ACADEMIC PRESS New York San Francisco London
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Copyright © 1977, by the Center For Advanced Study In Behavioral Sciences
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MITTED.
This (material) was prepared with the support of National
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findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are
those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the
National Science Foundation.
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Population patterns in the past.
(Studies in social discontinuity series)
Papers presented at a conference held at the University
of Pennsylvania in October 1974, and sponsored by the
Mathematical Social Science Board.
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Population-History-Congresses. I. Lee, Ronald,
Date II. Mathematical Social Science Board.
III. Title.
HB849.P684 301.32,9 76-27446
ISBN 0-12-441850-3
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
List of Contributors
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
BARBARA A. ANDERSON (277), Department of Sociology, Brown
University, Providence, Rhode Island
LUTZ K. BERKNER (53), Department of History, University of Califor-
nia at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
H. LE BRAS (297), National Institute of Demographic Studies, Paris,
France
M. DEMONET (297), School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sci-
ences, Paris, France
J. DUPAQUIER (297), Laboratory of Historical Demography, Paris,
France
E. A. HAMMEL (113), Department of Anthropology, University of
California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California
SUSAN B. HANLEY (165), Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area
Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
DAVID HERLIHY (135), Department of History, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts
ALBERT I. HERMALIN (71), Population Studies Center, University of
Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan
RONALD DEMOS LEE (337), Department of Economics and Population
Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
PETER H. LINDERT (229), Department of Economics, University of
Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
MASSIMO LIVI-BACCI (311), Department of Statistics, University of
Florence, Florence, Italy
R. M. McINNIS (201), Department of Economics, Queen's University,
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
DANIEL SCOTT SMITH (19), Department of History, University of
Illinois at Chicago Circle, Chicago, Illinois
ix
X List of Contributors
ETIENNE VAN DE WALLE (71), Population Studies Center, University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
KENNETH W. WACHTER (113), Department of Statistics and Center
for Population Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts
Introduction
RONALD DEMOS LEE
University of Michigan
Interest in the study of historical populations did not become wide-
spread until the late 1950s, when Gautier and Henry's now classic study
of the French parish of Crulai was published (Gautier & Henry, 1958).
This study established both a scientific methodology for the exploita-
tion of parish registers—family reconstitution—and a range of questions
that might be addressed by the methodology. The study yielded a richly
detailed description of the demographic behavior of individual families
in Crulai—more detailed, indeed, than could be derived for modern
populations from modern sources. In addition to this descriptive out-
put, the study yielded an important behavioral conclusion: Fertility
within marriage was at natural levels for the people of Crulai. It was not
regulated by individual couples aiming for particular family sizes.
Dozens of reconstitution studies from many countries have followed;
like the original, these studies are primarily concerned with description
and measurement. Such a limited focus reflects the newness of the
research area, the nature of the materials (mostly parish registers) so far
exploited, and the fact that this particular school of historical de-
mography is really a branch of analytic demography, which has always
been mainly descriptive.
A different approach has been taken by some social and economic
historians who have considered population change in a broader con-
text, following the important works of Goubert (1960) and Chambers
(1965). These historians have developed behavioral models following
prevailing currents in sociology and economics. The models, however,
have typically been verbal, and have not been formulated in ways
permitting clear tests. In general, attempts to test the models against
historical data have either been confined to glances at broad historical
patterns, or, if more detailed, have been statistically and demo-
graphically unsophisticated.
These two lines of analysis in historical demography need to be
l
2 Ronald Demos Lee
linked with a more rigorous approach to the formulation, estimation,
and testing of behavioral models. A growing number of scholars are
doing this kind of research, although much of the research is still
unpublished. To merge the tasks of descriptive measurement and
model testing more quickly, using the available quantitative tools, a
conference on the topic of Behavioral Models in Historical Demography
was organized, and held in October of 1974.1 The conference was
designed to facilitate interaction of model-oriented researchers in his-
torical demography, both with one another and with other historical
demographers. There were about 30 participants; their backgrounds
included demography, history, sociology, anthropology, economics,
and statistics. For all the diversity of the participants' backgrounds, the
outcome was surprisingly close to the intent of the organizers. Some
new models and hypotheses were developed and tested, and old hy-
potheses were scrutinized with the help of new statistical techniques.
THEORIES AND HYPOTHESES
It is all very well to invoke models as a source of rigor, precision, and
dramatic new insights, but models are at best as good as the theories
they attempt to embody, and good theories are rare. To set the back-
ground for this book, it is useful to focus on several theories that have
been used or might be used in historical research on fertility. These
include the theories of homeostasis, natural fertility, marriage-
inheritance, the new home economics, and relative income. The new-
comer to the field of historical population studies may want a more
general introduction to the literature. Consequently, a brief and highly
selective bibliography, which includes several excellent surveys, is
provided at the end of this chapter.
The Homeostasis Hypothesis
The homeostasis or "autoregulation" hypothesis asserts that many
preindustrial societies incorporated institutional or biological mecha-
nisms that not only kept population growth rates close to zero over the
long run, but also controlled living standards by regulating population
size in relation to resources. Malthusian population theory comes under
this heading, as do models discussed by Sauvy (1969), Wrigley (1969),
The conference took place at the Population Studies Center of the University of
Pennsylvania. It was sponsored by the Mathematical Social Sciences Board (MSSB) and
funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The organizers gratefully acknowledge
this support.
Introduction 3
Lee (forthcoming), and others. A special case of the homeostatic model
results from combining the natural fertility hypothesis with the
marriage-inheritance hypothesis. This particular homeostatic model,
which is of special interest in the context of preindustrial Europe, will
be developed in more detail after the two constituent hypotheses are
discussed.
The Natural Fertility Hypothesis
The natural fertility hypothesis asserts that in preindustrial Europe
fertility behavior within marriage was not subject to voluntary control in
any parity-dependent way. This hypothesis excludes any sort of "target
fertility" behavior, although voluntary practices (e.g., prolonged lacta-
tion) affecting fertility at all parities are consistent with natural fertility.
Many reconstitution studies, starting with Gautier and Henry (1958),
have strongly confirmed this hypothesis. The early studies show that
age-specific marital fertility is independent of age at marriage, as is age
of mother at last birth. Some subsequent reconstitution studies (e.g.,
Charbonneau, 1970) have found a relationship between age-specific
marital fertility and age at marriage, even when fertility behavior con-
formed in other respects to the natural fertility hypothesis.
Reconstitution data also provide another kind of evidence bearing on
the natural fertility hypothesis: the reactions of couples to the loss, by
death, of infants or young children. Evidence from a number of recon-
stitution studies indicates that couples made no attempt to replace such
losses by altering their subsequent fertility (Knodel, 1975; Smith, 1972).
The inference is that married couples did not attempt to control com-
pleted parity.
The theory received a severe blow from Wrigley's (1966) reconstitu-
tion of Colyton, which found substantial secular changes in marital
fertility, and positive evidence of parity-specific control. The covari-
ation of marital fertility with the harvest cycle or business cycle has also
been established (Lee, forthcoming). However, such behavior could
have had biological rather than voluntary origins; even if voluntary, it
could have been independent of parity and thus consistent with natural
fertility. In any case, this theory, generally accepted in the 1960s, is now
highly controversial.
The Marriage-Inheritance Hypothesis
It is widely agreed that in much of preindustrial Europe having the
means to a sufficient livelihood was prerequisite to marriage and that
frequently such means was obtained through actual or anticipated
inheritance. Hence in some instances marriage had to be delayed until
4 Ronald Demos Lee
the death of the father, and if this delaying were sufficiently common,
then variations in mortality would entail variations in nuptiality and
hence fertility, both cross-sectionally and over time.
Of course marriages were also based on wage labor or other income,
which weakens the implications of the inheritance model; in their
chapter Hermalin and van de Walle counter this point with the sugges-
tion that even if inheritance of land was not always necessary, the
inheritance of other forms of property may have been so. In any case,
the qualitative prediction of the model—that higher mortality should
cause younger and/or more frequent marriage—still holds. Berkner and
Mendels (forthcoming) give an excellent review of this literature.
More detailed predictions of the theory depend on the kind of inheri-
tance scheme in effect. Under an impartible inheritance system, the
property passes to one favored child, who can marry; the other children
emigrate or find local positions as servants or laborers, in which case
they would marry late or not at all. Under this system, the number of
households should vary little from one generation to the next, and
population size should remain in neutral equilibrium. There should
also be a relatively high proportion of stem families, since the favored
child and his or her spouse might co-reside with a surviving parent, or
sometimes with both parents.
Under a partible inheritance system, all children share equally in the
patrimony. Thus all have some likelihood of marriage. A partible in-
heritance system often led to subdivision of the holding. Population
could then grow from generation to generation, emigration would be
less, stem families would occur much less frequently, and the pro-
portions married would be high. Ohlin (1961) has provided a useful
analysis of how such a system responds to variations in mortality.
I have so far assumed that the number of landholdings or houses is
fixed. More realistically, the number depends on resources. Changes in
trade, technology, or social organization produce changes in the
number of holdings, thus altering the situation. And, of course, in
frontier areas with available land the potential number of holdings is far
greater than the actual. We would then expect high fertility resulting
either from early and universal marriage (within limits imposed by
often imbalanced sex ratios) or higher marital fertility (as parents an-
ticipate bright prospects for their children, or find them particularly
useful).
The Natural Fertility and Marriage-Inheritance Models Combined
Much of the literature in the field of historical demography, including
some of the chapters in this volume, accepts both the natural fertility
Introduction 5
and the marriage-inheritance hypotheses. Combined, these describe a
simple homeostatic system, which is often used to describe the institu-
tional regulation of population in preindustrial Europe. For this reason
I will pause to develop more explicitly the properties of this system.
Suppose that the number of hearths or stylized landholdings in a
region is fixed by custom or economic opportunity at some level, say H.
Couples cannot marry unless they acquire one of these landholdings
intact, typically by the death of a parent. Suppose further that every
hearth (or a constant proportion of hearths) has a reproductive-aged
couple bearing children at the natural rate, /. Then the annual number
of births, B, is simply B = /H, so that under these circumstances the
number of births per year is constant.
What of the population size? In the long run, population size, P, will
be given by life expectancy at birth, e, times the number of births: P =
0
Be, or P — efH. In other words, population size will vary in proportion
0 0
to life expectancy, even though the number of hearths and the number
of births are constant. This social mechanism, although it does temper
the effect of mortality change on population size, provides at best only
partial control.
What is the effect on living standards of changes in e? If the output,
0
Q, is fixed in the region, then output per head, q = Q/P, will be
inversely proportional to life expectancy. More realistically, if addi-
tional hands can augment output, then although q will vary inversely
with e, the variation will be less than proportional.
0
Suppose, for example, that Q = A1 -^ so that a 1% increase in
population induces a j8% increase in Q. (A is a parameter to be dis-
cussed later.) Plausible values for /3 would be between .5 and .8. An
increase of 1% in life expectancy, and hence population, will cause a
decline in per capita output, q, of (1 - /3)%. If, for example, life expec-
tancy increased from 25 to 35 years, or 40%, then per capita output
might fall by 10 or 20%.
However, as is emphasized by Herlihy (in this volume) and others,
the number of hearths does not remain constant. It varies in response to
changes in economic opportunities as reflected by the constant A in Q
— ^i-flp/^ Changes in economic opportunities in this sense will reflect
changes in technology, trade, climate, arable land, and so on. If the
number of hearths varies in proportion to economic opportunities over
the long run, then we may write H = hA, where h is the constant of
proportionality. Changes in opportunities will then induce offsetting
changes in population, leaving the standard of living unchanged.
To summarize, a change in economic opportunity would induce a
proportionate change in population and total output, leaving per capita
output unaffected. A change in life expectancy would induce a pro-
