Fertility decline in industrial America: an analysis of the Pennsylvania anthracite region, 1850-1900, using 'own children' methods.

Abstract

Summary The four main countries of the eastern Pennsylvania anthracite coal mining region furnish a case study of fertility decline in an area which is changing from a rural, agricultural base to an urban, industrial economy. Samples from the enumerators' manuscripts from the U.S. censuses of 1850-80 and 1900 provide the basis for the application of ‘own-children’ techniques for estimating age-specific fertility and child mortality. Age-specific child-woman ratios were tabulated from those samples and were used to estimate age-specific overall and marital fertility rates for the total population and for rural, urban and native and foreign-born sub-groups. Mortality estimates needed for the estimation of age-specific fertility rates are constructed from child survivorship and parity data from the 1900 Census, census death rates for other censuses, and model life tables. The results indicate that there was a consistent decline in fertility in this area over the period 1850-1900 and that most of this decline...