A large literature now exists about the influence of the household and family context on demographic behaviors, but at the moment very few is known about the possible interrelationships between demographic processes and the larger kin network, at least for historical populations. However, in a recent essay David Reher argued ...
(Show more)A large literature now exists about the influence of the household and family context on demographic behaviors, but at the moment very few is known about the possible interrelationships between demographic processes and the larger kin network, at least for historical populations. However, in a recent essay David Reher argued that past societies with strong or, conversely, weak family ties have little changed nowadays. Actually, in the Italian society family and family ties have always played a central role in people everyday life though migration, marriage, mortality and economic reasons could modify the network of relationships within a territory or a community.
Our purpose is precisely to assess how much influential the kin network could be on the demographic behaviors of an Italian peasant society during the 19th century. This analysis can be hardly carried out for Italian pre-unitary communities owing to the absence of continuous and reliable census sources necessary to know the composition of households and pattern of co-residence. For the little town of Casalguidi the availability of annual Status Animarum and vital registers allowed us to set up a nominative linkage between the two register types. We were therefore able to trace the year-by-year presence of individuals within different households, with further opportunity to define with precision their networks of relationships in the population. This fact enables us to check for possible differentials in nuptiality, mobility and fertility between people with and without such networks.
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