Social and Economic Determinants of Reproductive Behavior Before the Fertility Decline. The Case of Six Italian Communities During the Nineteenth Century

Breschi, Marco; Fornasin, Alessio; Manfredini, Matteo; Pozzi, Lucia; Rettaroli, Rosella; Scalone, Francesco

doi:10.1007/s10680-013-9303-8

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Until the last decade of the 19 th century, before industrialisation, the plains around Bologna were mostly populated by two social groups tied to the agricultural sectorthose bound by sharecropping contracts and those engaged in wage labour (Bellettini 1971;Kertzer and Hogan 1989). Sharecropping contracts were usually merely oral agreements splitting the harvest between the owner and the sharecropper (Breschi et al 2014;Rettaroli, Samoggia, and Scalone 2017;Scalone et al 2017). In 1860, of the 158 households in the two parishes, sharecroppers and rural landless workers headed 71 and 47 respectively.…”

Section: Socioeconomic Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neonatal mortality, cold weather, and socioeconomic status in two northern Italian rural parishes, 1820–1900

Scalone¹,

Samoggia²

2018

DemRes

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BACKGROUND Cold-related conditions represent one of the most common causes of neonatal death in many developing countries. The effects of cold external temperatures on neonatal mortality at the onset of demographic transition recently have attracted scholarly interest. OBJECTIVE First, we aim to study the effects of cold temperatures on neonatal mortality at the onset of demographic transition, focusing on two Italian rural parishes between 1820 and 1900. Second, we aim to assess whether the effects vary according to socioeconomic status (SES), especially among the most vulnerable social groups. METHODS We apply logistic regression and discrete-time event history analysis using micro-data from parish registers and daily records of external temperature. RESULTS The risk of death during the first month of life varied according to external temperature's variation and to socioeconomic status, demonstrating that neonates born to landless rural labourers generally suffered a higher neonatal mortality risk during winter and, more specifically; in case of low temperature at the childbirth during coldest months. CONCLUSIONS The risk of neonatal death increased as external temperatures decreased. The clear influence of temperature on the day of birth suggests that low temperatures on the day of birth exerted a fundamental scarring effect on children's survival. We also find significant differences in neonatal mortality by SES, resulting in more pronounced effects from season and temperature in rural proletarian families. The results show that

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Section: Socioeconomic Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neonatal mortality, cold weather, and socioeconomic status in two northern Italian rural parishes, 1820–1900

Scalone¹,

Samoggia²

2018

DemRes

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“…Under pressure from their landowners, and to avoid an imbalance between the workforce and farm size, the safest method for sharecroppers to guarantee the continuity of the domestic workforce was to increase their fertility (Kertzer and Hogan 1989;Scalone 2009, 2012;Breschi et al 2014) and to live in multiple households with other families (Poni 1978;Angeli 1983;Barbagli 1984;Doveri 2000). As noted in the previous section, the presence of grandmothers and older women in the same multiple household could represent important protection against neonatal and infant mortality.…”

Section: Agrarian System and Family Arrangements In Northern And Cent...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring unobserved heterogeneity in perinatal and neonatal mortality risks: The case of an Italian sharecropping community, 1900–39

et al. 2016

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Previous researchers have found that traditional determinants explain only a limited part of the variation in perinatal and infant mortality at the family level. In the study reported in this paper, we explored the factors that make the perinatal/neonatal death risk more heterogeneous across families. We estimated logistic regressions with cluster random effects at the maternal level, using data from the Italian village of Granarolo from 1900 to 1939. We estimated the effects of selected predictors on perinatal/neonatal mortality and unexplained inter-family variation. We found that non-rural skilled and lower-skilled workers experienced higher perinatal and neonatal mortality risks. Unexplained heterogeneity at the maternal level was lower for women living in sharecropper families than for those in landless labourer and non-rural worker families. Unexplained perinatal and neonatal mortality components were also due to socio-economic differences and were not necessarily related only to maternal biological features or shared genetic frailty.

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“…Faster population growth in municipalities with improved market access could occur via natural increase or in-migration; both are plausible channels in our context. Birth and death rates were certainly sensitive to grain price shocks in nineteenth-century Italy (Breschi, Derosas, and Manfredini 2004; Bengtsson and Dribe 2010; Breschi et al 2014; Derosas et al 2014). Yet this evidence is of dubious relevance, for harvest fluctuations—narrow in time and broad in space—are very different from the changes induced by eliminating borders, which are broad in time (i.e., enduring) and narrow in space (local to border areas).…”

Section: Robustness Checks and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal Borders and Population Geography in the Unification of Italy

A’Hearn,

Rueda

2023

J. Econ. Hist.

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We offer new evidence on the spatial economic impact of Italian unification. Adopting municipal population as a proxy for local economic activity, we construct a new geocoded dataset spanning the pre- and post-unification periods and discover robust evidence of an acceleration in growth near the former borders. A disproportionate improvement in market access boosted growth in these locations when barriers to trade were dismantled. Indirectly, unification’s decisive contribution to intraregional market integration, local specialization and exchange, and economic development is revealed.

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Social and Economic Determinants of Reproductive Behavior Before the Fertility Decline. The Case of Six Italian Communities During the Nineteenth Century

Cited by 11 publications

References 41 publications

Neonatal mortality, cold weather, and socioeconomic status in two northern Italian rural parishes, 1820–1900

Neonatal mortality, cold weather, and socioeconomic status in two northern Italian rural parishes, 1820–1900

Exploring unobserved heterogeneity in perinatal and neonatal mortality risks: The case of an Italian sharecropping community, 1900–39

Internal Borders and Population Geography in the Unification of Italy

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