The 1727-1731 Demographic Crisis in Non-Metropolitan Surrey

Mortality crises are periods of unusually high mortality resulted from a combination of epidemic episodes, climatic phenomena, historical events and sociopolitical factors. The most pronounced setback in the methodology applied to analyse mortality rates of historical populations is the inability to establish their size. Reference publications do not provide unambiguous measures of the intensity and scale of mortality crisis periods. This problem was approached with the use of the Standardised Demographic Dynamics Rate (SDDR) whose value provides information about the condition of a population, disregarding the size of the group. Demographic crises were indicated and identified among the population living in the 19th century in central Poland in the rural parish. The analysis was based on data obtained from parish registers, made use of the measure expressing the ratio of the number of births to the number of deaths, without using the size of the group. Results obtained from the analysis of data were set against the information about events causing a sudden growth in mortality derived from the widely-accessible literature. Value of the Standardised Demographic Dynamics Rate (SDDR) provides information aboutthe condition of a population, disregarding the size of the group. Nevertheless, only by combining the statistically obtained data with the information derived from written records it is possible to attempt to answer the question of the possible root cause of a demographic crisis.

ABSTRACTThe digital age allows data collection to be done on a large scale and at low cost. This is the case of genealogy trees, which flourish on numerous digital platforms thanks to the collaboration of a mass of individuals wishing to trace their origins and share them with other users. The family trees constituted in this way contain information on the links between individuals and their ancestors, which can be used in historical demography, and more particularly to study migration phenomena. The case of 19th century France is taken as an example, using data from the family trees of 238,009 users of the Geneanet website, or 2.5 million (unique) individuals. Using the geographical coordinates of the birthplaces of 25,485 ancestors born in France between 1800 and 1804 and those of their descendants (24,516 children, 29,715 grandchildren and 62,165 great-grandchildren), we study migration between generations at several geographical scales. We start with a broad scale, that of the departments, to reach a much finer one, that of the cities. Our results are consistent with those of the literature traditionally based on the parish or civil status registers. The results show that the use of collaborative genealogy data not only makes it possible to support previous findings of the literature, but also to enrich them.

In this research note, we examine how family size preferences evolved for women with and without children in response to changing COVID-19 mortality exposure during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We leverage spatiotemporal variation in COVID-19 deaths occurring during panel surveys in 2020 and 2021 with a population-based sample of 2,520 women, aged 18-34, across 94 municipalities in Pernambuco, Brazil. We use individual fixed-effects regressions to examine whether changes in municipality-level COVID-19 death rates are associated with changes in women's desired family size, net of their own or their family's COVID-19 infection status and other time-varying sociodemographic factors. We find that women with and without children at baseline responded differently to changing municipality-level COVID-19 deaths: while women without children did not change their desired family size, women with children saw a small but significant increase in their desired family size in response to rising COVID-19 mortality. These innovative findings suggest that women with children responded to widespread COVID-19-related loss within their communities by wanting to build and consolidate their families. We advance knowledge about varying contextual influences on fertility preferences during epidemics in a middle-income country with early and below-replacement fertility.

The Philippine epidemic experience suggests a research perspective that is attentive to local spatial variation and also recognizes connections across long periods of time, particularly across the Spanish and American colonial eras and the epidemic experience then and since. Among historical materials that need to be incorporated into the discourse and connected with evidence from modern, spatially disaggregated data systems are parish archival records of births, deaths, and marriages; households; and population changes. This research note outlines the Philippine parish records and presents illustrative results from twenty-eight parishes. Those records include local time series of deaths from which mortality crises, generally reflecting epidemics, are presented. KEYWORDS: PARISH ARCHIVES • EPIDEMIC • CRISIS MORTALITY • HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY • PHILIPPINES

This article uses aggregate analysis of parish registers to consider mortality in the early modern period. Based on a case study of the majority of the historical county of Surrey between about 1550 and 1750, it explores the nature and geographical distribution of mortality crises and seasonal patterns of mortality in normal, non-crisis, times. For the former it focusses mainly on two crises only a few years apart but with different causes, the dearth of the late 1590s and an outbreak of plague in 1603.

In this research note, we analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cultural participation. We use rich survey data from Denmark to construct pooled time-series cross-sectional data for each month of the years 2019–2021 and report three findings. First, participation in physical cultural activities (e.g. attending a concert or a museum) plummeted during two lockdowns and did not return to its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2021. Second, participation in digital activities (e.g. reading a digital book or following a museum on social media) did not change much during the pandemic. Overall, we find little evidence of substitution from physical to digital cultural participation during the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark. Third, socioeconomic gradients in cultural participation decreased during the pandemic for physical cultural participation, but did not change for digital cultural participation. We end by discussing what we can learn from our results about how social disruptions affect patterns of cultural participation and inequality.

We aimed to determine the public health status of an 18th century mountain locality. We collected data registered in parish death certificates from Arudy, a small village in the French Pyrenees during the period 1741-1800. Two thousand and six hundred and sixty-three cases were studied. About 50% of deaths occurred during the first 10 years of life. There were some particularities in deaths pattern with regards to age categories between males and females and seasonality. A fraction of individuals died at advanced ages (24.1% ≥60 years and of note three cases ≥100 years). The cause of death was reported in only 2.2% of cases (nearly always sudden fatalities). Maternal mortality could not be precisely determined. Throughout this period we identified a series of mortality crises which targeted mostly children and were probably in relation with undocumented epidemics. These data offer some clues about the sanitary situation of an European mountain community during the 18th century.

Noël Bonneuil. Temporalities in demographic history. In the pre-statistic period, series of baptism, marriages and burials reconstituted from the parish registers reflect the « ancien régime » demographic time. This is the time of the mortality crises, epidemics or shortages we can correlate with the price evolution. It's also possible to look for a causality between demographic, climatic or economic fluctuations and to propose mechanisms explaining the evolution of the temporal series. In the long term, technical problems will complicate the development of explanatory models. Nevertheless, it seems that conjunctural shocks explain more the general demographic evolution than regulation mechanisms. Apart from statistical methods, the theory of the dynamical systems renews the analysis of the fluctuations of fecondity. In the case of a given population in the XVIIth century, it outlines the existence of two rules concerning fecondity, each of then applicable depending of the conjunctures and the evolution of the age pyramid.

To decipher the social behaviors and public health status of a 19th-century small Western Pyrenean community using various historical demography data. From censuses, civil and parish registers of births, marriages, and deaths/burials, migration archives, and administrative records, we analyzed a series of demographic parameters in the village of Aste-Béon between 1801 and 1900. Acknowledging the limitations of such a historical demography approach (especially losses of data and underreporting of deaths of very young individuals), this study enabled us to draw a series of conclusions. We observed the usual demographic pattern shared by all Pyrenean communities, with a declining population during the second part of the century. A strong influence of agropastoral activity and Catholic practices on the social organization of this community was evidenced by the seasonality of conceptions and marriages. The disappearance of the traditional family and inheritance system at the end of the century was illustrated by a decreased age at marriage and a declining nuptiality rate. We confirmed the very high level of valley endogamy associated with a relatively intense degree of intra-valley marriage-associated mobility. A series of mortality crises related to epidemics (some cases documented: cholera, smallpox, and dysentery) was detected. Migration to Argentina and Uruguay was organized, especially between 1866 and 1872, including mainly nonfirstborn males who did not inherit familial property. The relatively low infant mortality rate, satisfactory lifespan, and absence of detectable increases in mortality during the winter months and periods of food scarcity argue in favor of a quite satisfactory sanitary level. This historical demography study offers additional insights into the social organization and health status of a unique Western Pyrenean community during the 19th century.