Demographic Responses and Socioeconomic Structure: Population Processes in England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century (original) (raw)

Fertility transition in England and Wales: continuity and change

Health Transition Review the Cultural Social and Behavioural Determinants of Health, 1996

The focus of this paper is whether the transition from high to low fertility reveals continuity or discontinuity with the past. Our analyses of districts of England and Wales over time reveal an overall picture of continuity. Specifically, we show that (1) a substantial proportion of districts experienced pretransition variations in marital fertility that were so large that they are suggestive of deliberate fertility control; (2) the changes over time in the distributions of marital fertility levels and the relative importance of marital fertility levels to the determination of overall fertility levels were gradual and smooth; (3) the proportion of districts dominated by marital fertiliity variation, as opposed to nuptiality variation, increased gradually over time, and both marital fertility and nuptiality variations were present in all periods considered; and (4) there are important relationships between changes over time in marital fertility and socioeconomic variables in periods both before and after the transition. The last conclusion is based on our estimated equations from the pooled cross-sectional, time-series data. Moreover, these estimated equations reveal relationships between changes in specific explanatory variables and changes in marital fertility that are very similar both before and after the onset of the transition.

Demographic Change and Social Structure

The uncertainties of population changes are explored through first, a critique of Malthus's Essay on Population, showing that an author with an empirical and inductive reputation relied heavily upon "stylised facts" at odds with the world around him, and a theodicy opposed to social and political reform; second, through the examination of predictions made in the mid-twentieth century that Britain's population was on a path of secular decline.

Introduction: Urban-Rural Differences in Historical Demography

2018

Systematic research on urban-rural variation in demographic behavior is necessary to overcome dichotomous views resulting from studying cities and the countryside separately. After all, a web of interactions facilitating the diffusion of ideas and behavior connects cities and rural areas. That’s why it is especially important to study the comportment of migrants moving between urban and rural environments. In line with this argument five case studies are presented in this special issue that use static or dynamic individual-level data to analyze urban-rural demographic differences and life courses of migrants in Europe (Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland), mainly during the nineteenth century. The outcomes show that the place of residence indeed influenced demographic behavior to a considerable extent, although they do not reflect a strict division between cities and rural area. Rather, demographic behavior was affected by a diverse scheme of local conditions, including various to...

The changing composition of the rural population of England 1971-1991

In R. Cresser and S. Gleave (eds.) Migration Within England and Wales Using the ONS Longitudinal Study, The Stationery Office, London, 2000

A major problem for interpreting rural population change in the UK arises from confusion in analytical approaches to its investigation. This is readily illustrated with regard to views on counterurbanisation, which has been a prime issue in rural studies over the past 10-15 years (Champion, 1989a; Coombes et al., 1989; Vartiainen, 1989). For one thing, there is variety in interpretations of what counterurbanisation is (e.g. Dean et al., 1984; Champion, 1989b). For some it involves a redistribution of population from urban to rural areas, so a rapid increase in the rural birth rate accompanied by falling procreation in cities could constitute counterurbanisation (Coombes et al., 1989). For others it has more to do with migration balances and the reversal of rural outmigration in favour of an absolute or net rural in-migrant flow (Fielding, 1990; Flowerdew and Boyle, 1992). Here, of course, we have the possibility that the average size of incoming households is on average small, which, if allied with a decline in fertility, could result in counterurbanisation being associated with population loss (Weekley, 1988). Some demand that a restricted form of migration constitutes counterurbanisation, either by asking for a 'clean-break' with past population trends (Coombes et al., 1989) or else in cautioning against confusing urban decentralisation with counterurbanisation, which many see as involving more than urban spillover (e.g. Flowerdew and Boyle, 1992). There are also significant differences in the manner in which counterurbanisation is conceptualised and investigated analytically. Offering an empirical articulation of such differences, Halliday and Coombes (1995) show that conceptualisations which offer anti-metropolitan, anti-urban or pro-rural visions of migrant flows produce different estimates of counterurbanisation, with a relatively weak correspondence between these options. Adding a further twist, Fielding (1990) linked counterurbanisation to economic change, by holding that it is not the reverse of urbanisation, since the latter involved losses in the farm population. Yet a counter-argument could be that past movements from rural to urban areas that fuelled urbanisation were allied to the expansion of manufacturing, and, as manufacturing employment is declining, contemporary urban-to-rural migration might well comprise a 'genuine' counter-urbanisation. This last sentence should not be read as providing some justification for the continued use of the term counterurbanisation but indicates how it is possible to so confuse what is meant by this term that we can be distracted from focusing on what we actually want to know (Hoggart, 1997). On this score a number of issues could be critical, but for me two stand apart. These are population change in cities and change in the rural population. Of course these are comprised of various dimensions, for most research is concerned with the characteristics of population change (its demographic, sex and socioeconomic structures at the very least), as well as with the geographical linkages (migration) associated with particular changes. It is not intended to imply by this urban-rural divide that processes in these two milieu are not interrelated , nor that there is a simple distinction between urban and rural (Sayer, 1984; Hoggart, 1990). Even were the latter the case, there are good reasons for urban analysts to be interested in demographic issues in areas of low population density. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, and certainly well before this (Saville, 1957), rural depopulation was a major factor in the UK, with significant impacts on cities (Law, 1967). When rural research shifted attention in the 1960s toward investigations of commuter villages (e.g.