Demographic responses to short-term stress in a 19^th century Tuscan population: the case of household out-migration

This paper deals with the relationship between household emigration and short-term crisis in a rural community of mid-19th century Tuscany. Based on a detailed reconstruction of individual and household life-histories, the paper shows the close relationship between household emigration and different kinds of short-term stresses, either economic, epidemiologic or within the household. Despite the different response by SES - with the poorest strata of the population much exposed to price changes and mortality crisis - the death of the household head appears as one of the most powerful factor of household emigration

Health and socio-demographic conditions as determinants of marriage and social mobility

This paper makes use of data collected from military registers and marriage certificates for the population of Alghero, in Sardinia, for the period 1866-1925, with the aim of investigating the role played by physical characteristics and health in the possibility of social mobility through marriage. Our findings demonstrate that, whereas physical defects and ill health had little impact on the chances of marrying an illiterate woman, these factors did have a negative effect on the chances of marrying a woman who was literate. In a context in which intergenerational social mobility remained limited and the family had the final say on marriage arrangements, it is likely that only healthy individuals were selected for marriages regarded as strategic for the purposes of forming and strengthening family alliances, and/or improving the social position within the community.health, marriage, Sardinia, social mobility

Demographic responses to short-term stress in a 19th century Tuscan population: The case of household out-migration

This paper deals with the relationship between household emigration and short-term crisis in a rural community of mid-19th century Tuscany. Based on a detailed reconstruction of individual and household life-histories, the paper shows the close relationship between household emigration and different kinds of short-term stresses, either economic, epidemiologic or within the household. Despite the different response by SES - with the poorest strata of the population much exposed to price changes and mortality crisis - the death of the household head appears as one of the most powerful factor of household emigration.emigration, household, Italy, sharecropping, short-term stress

Male partner choice in Sardinia, late 19th-early 20th century

This paper makes use of data collected from military registers and marriage certificates for the population of Alghero, in Sardinia, for the period 1866-1925, with the aim of investigating the role played by physical characteristics and health in the possibility of social mobility through marriage. Our findings demonstrate that, whereas physical defects and ill health had little impact on the chances of marrying an illiterate woman, these factors did have a negative effect on the chances of marrying a woman who was literate. In a context in which intergenerational social mobility remained limited and the family had the final say on marriage arrangements, it is likely that only healthy individuals were selected for marriages regarded as strategic for the purposes of forming and strengthening family alliances, and/or improving the social position within the community

A micro-analytical investigation of reproductive behaviour in Italy during the Fascist period

Between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, in line with what was happening in numerous European countries, the fascist regime in Italy instigated a series of measures aimed at combating the decline in fertility. Using individual data on four communities with different socio-economic characteristics taken from the Census of 1961, this study aims to verify if the regime's propaganda campaign and regulative measures to boost the birth-rate had any real impact within particular segments of the population. The study shows that there was only a modest recovery in the birth rate for a short period. These increases can be partly attributable to the policies activated from 1937 that prompted a significant increase in the marriage rate. apart of this little effect, individual-level analysis has revealed no increase in the birth-rate connected by the regime's policy

Son Preference in a Sharecropping Society: Gender Composition of Children and Reproduction in a Pre-Transitional Italian Community

Before the demographic transition, were couples able to control their fertility? Can we find evidence for this by comparing households with different occupations, in which the sex composition of the offspring may reveal a preference for children of a given sex and reproductive behaviours that differ in response to economic factors? To address this question, Matteo Manfredini, Marco BresCHi and Alessio fornasin make use of an original database on the fertility of nineteenth-century Tuscan families that combines information from parish registers and from a local census of inhabitants. They compare the probability of further births according to the sex composition of surviving children, focusing on four social groups: day labourers, sharecroppers, smallholders and non-agricultural occupations. The authors find evidence that sharecroppers tended to favour large families in order to secure a male heir

Deaths and survivors in war: The Italian soldiers in WWI

OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to study the selection effects of mortality among soldiers in WWI. METHODS Individual-level data of more than 62,000 soldiers born between 1874 and 1899 in north-eastern Italy was used. Almost 10% of these soldiers died in the war. A data set was constructed by linking two different sources, the call-up registers and the Roll of Honour of the fallen Italian soldiers of WWI. RESULTS The risk of death of soldiers in war depended partly on the soldier\u2019s assignment to corps and partly on personal behaviour and individual characteristics. A relatively small number of soldiers of large body size fell in battle. The most universal cause of death was illness. Literate soldiers were less likely to die in captivity. CONTRIBUTION The concept of mortality differential has rarely been applied to soldiers engaged in conflict. This is because they were supposed to experience similar perils and run similar risks during the war. However, our study found evidence of strong mortality differentials among soldiers, which were strictly associated with the striking differences in terms of literacy, education, and socio-economic status that permeated the Italian society of that time and that the universal enrolment allowed to highlight

The Legacy of Foundlings in Emilia-Romagna (Italy)

Between 1820 and 1929, in Iggio and in Tiola, rural parishes not too distant from the respective chief towns, a large number of marriages occurred between natives and former foundlings. The study of the distribution of surnames within the provinces of Emilia-Romagna (Italy) leads one to believe that the phenomenon was quite widespread in this area. This observation does not wish to call into question what is known about the extinction of families from the towns, their continual replacement by people who immigrated from the surrounding countryside and the resulting gene flow; however, it supplies evidence of how, in many cases, this was accompanied by a gene flow, limited but not negligible, in the opposite direction. The gene flow from immigration occurring over the last hundred years would seem to be on a completely different scale, with a notable impact on the genetic structure of the populations studied

The Combination Of Rop And Raft Polymerization For The Synthesis Of Polymeric Nanoparticles

Polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) are colloids in the nanometric size that find application in several field, such as optics, coating and medicine. In this latter case, they are used as drug delivery systems for different therapeutics ranging from lipophilic drugs to oligonucleotides. These nano-colloids are generally made up of polyesters as long as they are able to degrade into safe and easy removable compounds, such as lactic acid and hydroxycaproic acid. In this work, starting from a geometrical model developed for the synthesis of NPs with the same NP size and different molecular weight (MW) block copolymers1, a method to independently control the main characteristics of biodegradable NPs stabilized by highly hydrophilic polymers has been developed and here presented. The method consists in the synthesis of block-copolymers with a brush-like structure via the combination of two living polymerizations: the ring opening polymerization (ROP) and the reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. A library of block copolymers has been produced and self-assembled into water to generate NPs with different size and block-copolymer MWs. As long as these NPs are intended for biomedical applications, the degradation behavior of these colloids has been studied and correlated with the structure of the lipophilic part of the block copolymer. It has been found that the number of the lactone units and their geometrical disposition in the block copolymers impact the degradation behavior of the NPs they are composed of. Thanks to this novel method, it is possible to synthesize NPs with the same size, but with different degradation time. References 1. Palmiero, U. C.; Agostini, A.; Gatti, S.; Sponchioni, M.; Valenti, V.; Brunel, L.; Moscatelli, D., Raft macro-surfmers and their use in the ab initio raft emulsion polymerization to decouple nanoparticle size and polymer molecular weight. Macromolecules 2016, 49 (22), 8387-8396