Age Specific and Differential Fertility in Durham and Easington Registration Districts, England, 1851 and 1861

Abstract

The current interest in fertility decline and the demographic transition has led to extensive study of the secular decline of fertility in countries and sub-regions of presently low fertility. Extensive work has been completed or is underway regarding Europe in connection with Ansley Coale’s European Fertility Project. In addition, considerable attention has been paid to fertility in the demographic experience of the United States, and to other areas which have experienced fertility decline. One problem with most historical fertility studies is that they lack data on age-specific fertility and also on fertility differentials. So, for example, the European Fertility Project has relied on a form of indirect standardization, the indices of overall fertility (If), marital fertility (Ig), illegitimate fertility (Ih), and proportions married (Im), to compensate for the lack of age-specific data. There are similar historical data constraints on some types of differential fertility categorizations (e.g., social class, literacy, occupation, nativity).