The influence of demographic trends on number of undivided family households in Southern Croatia

Abstract

On the assumption that the rural population of southern Croatia (Dubrovnik) during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tended to form and live in joint families, the article seeks to establish the extent to which demographic tendencies influence the number of joint families. The small number of joint families in the seventeenth century is not a result of essential changes in the way of life, i.e. in attitudes towards joint family. Rather, is a logical consequence of extremely unfavorable demographic trends between late fifteenth and late seventeenth century which reduced the population of the Dubrovnik villages to one third. Renewed expansion of joint families in the nineteenth century is closely connected with the demographic transition, which caused population growth.