Socio-economic status and fertility in an urban context at the end of the nineteenth century: a linked records study from Tartu, Estonia

The topic of socio-economic fertility differences and its causes during the demographic transition has received a significant amount of attention in historical demography. With few exceptions, however, the previous studies have dealt with Western Europe. This paper increases the geographic range of the literature and investigates the influence of socio-economic status on marital fertility in an urban population of Tartu, a mid-sized university town in Estonia. Unlike previous studies, we perform both a cross-sectional analysis – using census data to analyse net marital fertility – and event history analysis – using linked-records sample to analyse the probability of next birth after the census. We measure socio-economic status based on the husband’s occupation, but also include information on the level of her education, employment and migration status. In line with the literature, our results confirm that women belonging to the highest social group to have considerably lower marital fertility in the early phase of transition. However, there is no linear social gradient in fertility in Tartu. Instead, we find women married to professionals and skilled workers to have higher fertility, whereas low fertility is exhibited also by women married to men working in the low-wage service sector. We fail to find any support that the educational level of the woman was differentiating fertility in the late nineteenth century Tartu. We relate these patterns in fertility to both adjustment to structural forces as well as innovation and diffusion of new demographic behaviour experienced by the local urban population during the fertility transition

Child Mortality Influencing Fertility in Estonia during the Demographic Transition

Translated from English.Submitted: 17.06.2019. Accepted: 08.04.2020.Настоящая статья представляет собой переработанную версию текста, ранее опубликованного на английском языке: Gortfelder M. Chapter 6. The Influence of Childhood Mortality on Subsequent Fertility during the Demographic Transition. DOI 10.15826/B978-5-7996-2656-3.07 // Nominative Data in Demographic Research in the East and the West / ed. by E. Glavatskaya, G. Thorvaldsen, G. Fertig, M. Szoltysek. Ekaterinburg : Ural Univ. Press, 2019. P. 121–137.Перевод с английского языка.Поступила в редакцию: 17.06.2019. Принята к печати: 08.04.2020.Сюжет о связи младенческой и детской смертности с рождаемостью занимает важное место в теории демографического перехода. Однако Принстонский проект, направленный на эмпирическую проверку достоверности теории на материалах европейских государств, дал противоречивые результаты, что привело к возникновению дискуссии о влиянии снижения смертности детей в раннем возрасте на изменение репродуктивного поведения родителей. Изучение особенностей демографического перехода в Эстонии актуально, поскольку по темпам снижения рождаемости она занимала одно из первых мест в Европе уже в конце XIX в. Данная статья, выполненная на номинативном источнике — Посемейном регистре Эстонской Республики, дополняет серию исследований, посвященных феномену связи младенческой и детской смертности с рождаемостью. В частности, в ней проанализировано репродуктивное поведение двух поколений эстонок, родившихся в 1860–1879 и 1880–1899 гг. и вступивших в репродуктивный воз- раст, соответственно, в начале и в конце периода демографического перехода, индустриализации и урбанизации Эстонии. Полученные в ходе исследования результаты свидетельствуют о том, что пары, утратившие ребенка, стремились восполнить потерю, и вероятность наступления новой беременности увеличивалась с ростом числа умерших детей. В литературе это явление известно как «замещение», и в Эстонии оно наиболее четко проявлялось в среде горожанок и женщин более позднего поколения, что было связано с распространением контроля за репродуктивным поведением. Проведенное исследование также показало, что смерть ребенка приводила к сокращению интервала до следующих родов, что являлось как результатом прекращения кормления грудью, так и свидетельством распространения практики планирования семьи. Однако в среде горожанок и женщин позднего поколения эта взаимообусловленность проявлялась меньше или совсем отсутствовала, а снижение рождаемости шло не столько за счет увеличения интервалов между родами, сколько за счет сознательного решения эстонцев иметь небольшую семью.The correlation between infant and child mortality and fertility holds an important place in the demographic transition theory. The Princeton project that aimed to empirically check the validity of the theory with reference to the material of European states, however, produced mixed if not contradictory results, which led to a disagreement on the importance of infant mortality for fertility transition. This research considers the peculiarities of Estonia’s demographic transition and is relevant because as early as the nineteenth century, Estonia was among the countries whose fertility decline was the fastest. This article refers to a nominative source, the Family Register of the Estonian Republic, and adds to a series of research works studying the correlation between infant and child mortality and fertility. More specifically, the article focuses on the fertility histories of two generations of Estonian women born between 1860 and 1879 and 1880 and 1899 and reaching childbearing age at the beginning and at the end of the demographic transition period respectively, as well as Estonia’s industrialisation and urbanisation. The data received as a result of the analysis testify to the fact that parents who had lost a child aimed at making up for the loss; as a result, new pregnancies were more likely to occur following the loss of children. In scholarly literature, this phenomenon is referred to as replacement, and in Estonia it was particularly noticeable among women residing in cities and those of the later generation which resulted from the spread of control over reproductive behaviour. The research demonstrates that in terms of spacing, child deaths decreased the interval before the next birth. This is a mix of both deliberate behaviour and a biological effect caused by the death of an infant that has been breastfed. The effect on the spacing, however, does not gain strength among urban women and women of the later generation, but rather the contrary, and the decrease in the birth ratio was not so much due to an increase in the intervals between births, but due to the conscious decision of Estonians to have a small family

Educational heterogamy during the early phase of the educational expansion: Results from the university town of Tartu, Estonia in the late 19th century

BACKGROUND In historical perspective, the transition from pre-industrial to modern societies is associated with increasing social status heterogamy. As individual’s acquired characteristics became more important for partner selection than inherited class status, the importance of status homogamy declined and marrying outside one’s own social group became more frequent. OBJECTIVE We investigate educational heterogamy in a university town at the eastern border of the Hajnal line at the end of the 19th century. We ask whether marriage of unequally educated partners is related to dissimilarity in other characteristics of the partners. Ethnic background, origin (place of birth) and age difference between the spouses are considered as characteristics that may associate with sorting into educationally heterogamous unions. METHODS The analysis uses data from the 1897 census in Tartu. Using logistic regression models, we estimate how age difference, origin heterogamy, and ethnic heterogamy of the spouses is associated with the probability of educational heterogamy. RESULTS The results indicate a positive relationship between educational heterogamy and marrying outside own ethnic or origin group, but no effect for spousal age difference. CONCLUSIONS Our study provides new evidence about marriage markets during modernisation, more specifically about the role of education. We show that educationally heterogamous unions in Tartu were also more often heterogamous in terms of partners’ background characteristics. This suggests that education may have motivated intermarriage by ethnicity and origin. CONTRIBUTION Previous literature on this period has focused on social homogamy based on occupational information, while research on educational assortative mating mostly exists for the second half of the 20th century and later. We contribute by studying the importance of education in marital selection in the early phase of the educational expansion and economic modernisation