Waarom Jan en Cor met elkaar trouwden

Who migrate to a larger city or another country? How do marriage partners find each other? In order to research such questions over the centuries, data are collected in archives, transcribed and stored in large historical databases. All over the world there are about thirty databases with data from individual life courses, among which the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN). Working with these databases is not always easy. This inaugural lecture discusses three strategies: In the curriculum of the historical faculties working with these databases needs more emphasis, subsets which are easy to handle by historians must be made out of these datasets and more cooperation is needed between scientists each with their own specializations. The basis for this cooperation must be laid by a common Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) which is introduced here for the first time in the Netherlands. In 2008 Kees Mandemakers was appointed professor of Large Historical Databases at the Faculty of History and Arts of the Erasmus University Rotterdam by the International Institute of Social History (IISH)

Sibship size and status attainment across contexts: Evidence from the Netherlands, 1840-1925

This paper investigates the effects of sibship size on status attainment across different contexts and subgroups. Resource dilution theory predicts that with larger sibship size, children’s status outcomes fall. However, the empirical record has shown that this is not always the case. In this paper we have tested three alternative hypotheses for neutral or even positive effects of sibship size on status attainment on the basis of a large-scale registry database covering the period of industrialization and fertility decline in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Our findings offer support for the family developmental cycle, buffering by kin groups, and socio-economic development as alternative explanations to the resource dilution hypothesis.child well-being, family size, Netherlands, nineteenth century, resource dilution theory, sibship size, status attainment

Source Oriented Harmonization of Aggregate Historical Census Data: a Flexible and Accountable Approach in RDF

Historical censuses are one of the most challenging datasets to compare over time. While many (successful) efforts have been made by researchers to harmonize these types of data, a lack of a generic workflow thwarts other researchers in their endeavors to do the same. In order to use historical census data for longitudinal analysis, a common process currently often loosely referred to as harmonization is inevitable. This process becomes even more challenging when dealing with aggregate data. Current approaches, whether focusing on micro or aggregate data, mainly provide specific, goal-oriented solutions to solve this problem. The nature of our data calls for an approach which allows different interpretations and preserves the link to the underlying sources at all times. To realize this we need a flexible, bottom-up harmonization process which allows us to iteratively discover the peculiarities of these types of data and provide different interpretations on the same data in an accountable way. In this article, we propose an approach which we refer to as source-oriented harmonization. We use the Resource Description Framework from (RDF) as the technological backbone of our efforts and aim to make the process of harmonization more graspable for others to stimulate similar efforts

Defining and distributing longitudinal historical data in a general way through an intermediate structure

'Der Beitrag diskutiert am Beispiel von demographischen Mikrodaten methodologische Probleme von Längsschnittdaten. Die Herausforderungen bestehen darin, 1. Lebensverläufe in kartesische Datenformate zu transformieren, die mit den Erfordernissen gängiger statistischer Analysesysteme kompatibel sind, und 2. Datensätze für interlokale und interkulturelle Studien vergleichbar zu machen. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen wird eine intermediäre Datenstruktur (IDS) vorgeschlagen, die auf alle Datenbanken übertragen kann. Die Autoren erläutern den Vorteil des IDS-Ansatzes und die Maßnahmen, die zur Umsetzung des Konzeptes führen werden.' (Autorenreferat)'In recent years, studies of historical populations have shifted from tracing large-scale processes to analyzing longitudinal micro data in the form of 'life histories'. This approach expands the scope of social history by integrating data on a range of life course events. The complexity of life-course analysis, however, has limited most researchers to working with one specific database. The authors discuss methodological problems raised by longitudinal historical data and the challenge of converting life histories into rectangular datasets compatible with statistical analysis systems. The logical next step is comparing life courses across local and national databases, and they propose a strategy for sharing historical longitudinal data based on an intermediate data structure (IDS) that can be adopted by all databases. They describe the benefits of the IDS approach and activities that will advance the goals of simplifying and promoting research with longitudinal historical data.' (author's abstract

Introduction: Content, Design and Structure of Major Databases with Historical Longitudinal Population Data

In recent years the development of historical databases reconstructing the lives of large populations accelerated. These considerable investments of time and money have greatly expanded possibilities for new research in history, demography, sociology, economics, and other disciplines. This special issue describes the content and design of 23 important historical databases. Authors were given the freedom to discuss a range of practical and technical decisions from evaluating archival sources to crowdsourcing data entry. The most common issue is nominative record linkage, but we find different choices between semi-automatic and fully automatic linkage techniques and various approaches for connecting diverse sources. Some databases describe special problems, like linking Chinese names, handwritten text recognition or the construction of a release in IDS-format. Other databases offer detailed descriptions of sources or discuss prospects for including new datasets

Linking the Historical Sample of the Netherlands with the USA Censuses, 1850–1940

During the 19th and early 20th century about 220,000 Dutch born persons migrated to the USA. The Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) contains about 85,500 persons born in the Netherlands between 1812 and 1922. In this article we report the way we have matched persons from the HSN with the American censuses from the period 1850 till 1940. For this purpose, a linking process was designed, comprising of three stages: harmonization, matching and validation. The different nature of the two datasets (HSN and the USA Censuses) asked for some harmonization prior to the matching. Once the data had been properly prepared, two strategies were applied in order to link the data sets. The first one, called Similarity Approach, matched individuals from both datasets by comparing on the basis of resemblance of first and last names. The second approach, called Transformation Approach, made use of dictionaries with Anglicized versions of Dutch first and last names and their most common or most likely Dutch original(s). Because of the sample character of the HSN even exact matches showed ambiguity that needs to be resolved. For this reason, a validation process comparing the household context was run to provide a more trustworthy result. In the end we identified 484 individuals present in the HSN database with reliable links to the American censuses. We also evaluated the result in the light of what we know from emigration patterns to the USA over time and period and we concluded that our efforts have produced a reasonable result. Nevertheless, we are aware that we may have missed links. We also found that at least 45% of the emigrants returned to the Netherlands at some point during their life course

Like Mother, Like Daughter. Intergenerational Transmission of Infant Mortality Clustering in Zeeland, the Netherlands, 1833-1912

The burden of infant mortality is not shared equally by all families, but clusters in high risk families. As yet, it remains unclear why some families experience more infant deaths than other families. Earlier research has shown that the risk of early death among infants may at least partially be transmitted from grandmothers to mothers. In this paper, we focus on the intergenerational transmission of mortality clustering in the Netherlands in the province of Zeeland between 1833 and 1912, using LINKS Zeeland, a dataset containing family reconstitutions based on civil certificates of birth, marriage and death. We assess whether intergenerational transmission of mortality clustering occurred in Zeeland, and if so, whether it can be explained on the basis of the demographic characteristics of the families in which the infants were born. In addition, we explore the opportunities for comparative research using the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS). We find that mortality clustering is indeed transmitted from grandmothers to mothers, and that the socioeconomic status of the family, the survival of mothers and fathers, and the demographic characteristics of the family affected infant survival. However, they explain the heterogeneity in infant mortality at the level of the mother only partially

Like Mother, Like Daughter

The burden of infant mortality is not shared equally by all families, but clusters in high risk families. As yet, it remains unclear why some families experience more infant deaths than other families. Earlier research has shown that the risk of early death among infants may at least partially be transmitted from grandmothers to mothers. In this paper, we focus on the intergenerational transmission of mortality clustering in the Netherlands in the province of Zeeland between 1833 and 1912, using LINKS Zeeland, a dataset containing family reconstitutions based on civil certificates of birth, marriage and death. We assess whether intergenerational transmission of mortality clustering occurred in Zeeland, and if so, whether it can be explained on the basis of the demographic characteristics of the families in which the infants were born. In addition, we explore the opportunities for comparative research using the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS). We find that mortality clustering is indeed transmitted from grandmothers to mothers, and that the socioeconomic status of the family, the survival of mothers and fathers, and the demographic characteristics of the family affected infant survival. However, they explain the heterogeneity in infant mortality at the level of the mother only partially

Introduction: Major Databases with Historical Longitudinal Population Data: Development, Impact and Results

Over the last 60 years several major historical databases with reconstructed life courses of large populations have been launched. The development of these databases is indicative of considerable investments that have greatly expanded the possibilities for new research within the fields of history, demography, sociology, as well as other disciplines. In this volume spanning seven articles, eight databases are included that had a wide impact on research in various disciplines. Each database had its own unique genesis that is well described in the articles assembled in this volume. They inform readers about how these databases have changed the course of research in historical demography and related disciplines, how settled findings were challenged or confirmed, and how innovative investigations were launched and implemented. In the end we explore how research with this kind of databases will develop in future

From Matched Certificates to Related Persons

For the Netherlands, a rich new data source has become available which contains indexed civil certificates for multiple generations of individuals: LINKS. The current version of the dataset contains information on 1.7 million demographic events for the province of Zeeland in the 19th and early 20th centuries and will be extended to other provinces in the Netherlands in the near future. To be able to study demographic behaviour, life courses and family relations need to be reconstructed from the civil certificates. This paper describes the steps that are taken to move from the LINKS database, which contains digitised birth, marriage, and death certificates and relational information between individuals on these certificates, to LINKS-gen, which contains over six hundred thousand life courses, family reconstructions for up to seven generations, and fertility, marital, mortality, and occupational status information, ready for analysis. We present procedures for variable construction and data cleaning. Furthermore, we give a short overview of the LINKS database, discuss quality checks, and give advice on selection of relevant cases necessary to move from LINKS to LINKS-gen. The paper is accompanied by R-scripts to convert and construct the datafiles