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By relying on longitudinal data on two rural parishes in the Russian Baltic province of Livland, the article analyses two questions concerning famine's short‐run effects on mortality in a manorial system: (1) whether there is evidence of a social gradient in mortality during the famine of 1844–6 and (2) whether the manors could protect the peasants against the hardships. The analysis reveals that neither the status of a farmer peasant nor the landlord saved the local inhabitants from an increased risk of dying during the famine of 1844–6. The conventional assumptions about the protective effect of the higher socio‐economic status or type of manor against subsistence crisis found very little support in the study.

Adult stature has become a widely used indicator of childhood nutritional status in historical populations and may provide insights into health inequalities that are not discernible in mortality rates. However, most pre-twentieth-century British data on heights suffer from selection biases. Here we present unique evidence on heights of adult males by occupation from an unbiased sample of adult males in Dorset in 1798-99. The mean height of fully grown (married) men was very similar to that of older military recruits, and our sample therefore confirms the taller stature of English males relative to males of other European countries in the same period. In contrast to previous evidence of negligible or U-shaped socio-economic gradients in mortality in this period, we found a fairly linear gradient in height by socio-economic status, that is similar in magnitude to class differences in adult height among English males born in the mid-twentieth century.Supplementary material for this article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2020.1823011.

The Princeton European Fertility Project famously studied the determinants of fertility transition using geographical data. The project, however, received criticism for using highlevel spatial units that hide much of the variation within. Additionally, although the project underlined the importance of neighbourhood influence through linguistic and cultural similarities, the spatial aspects were not comprehensively studied. This article investigates fertility determinants during the second half of the fertility transition in Estonia, a country with one of the earliest transitions in Europe. We study the completed cohort fertility of married women born between 1875 1894 in Estonia at the lowest-level of municipalities. Given the spatial nature of the data, spatial Durbin models are used in addition to the OLS model. The results show that demographic, cultural, educational, economic and spatial influences were all important in determining the level of fertility during the transition.

Adult stature has become a widely used indicator of childhood nutritional status in historical populations and may provide insights into health inequalities that are not discernible in mortality rates. However, most pre-twentieth-century British data on heights suffer from selection biases. Here we present unique evidence on heights of adult males by occupation from an unbiased sample of adult males in Dorset in 1798-99. The mean height of fully grown (married) men was very similar to that of older military recruits, and our sample therefore confirms the taller stature of English males relative to males of other European countries in the same period. In contrast to previous evidence of negligible or U-shaped socio-economic gradients in mortality in this period, we found a fairly linear gradient in height by socio-economic status, that is similar in magnitude to class differences in adult height among English males born in the mid-twentieth century.Supplementary material for this article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2020.1823011.

Funder: University of Cambridge, We use individual-level census data for England and Wales for the period 1851–1911 to investigate the interplay between social class and geographical context determining patterns of childbearing during the fertility transition. We also consider the effect of spatial mobility or lifetime migration on individual fertility behavior in the early phases of demographic modernization. Prior research on the fertility transition in England and Wales has demonstrated substantial variation in fertility levels and declines by different social groups; however, these findings were generally reported at a broad geographical level, disguising local variation and complicated by residential segregation along social class and occupational lines. Our findings confirm a clear pattern of widening social class differences in recent net fertility, providing strong support for the argument that belonging to a certain social group was an important determinant of early adoption of new reproductive behavior in marriage in England and Wales. However, a relatively constant effect of lower net fertility among long-distance migrants both before the transition and in the early phases of declining fertility indicates that life course migration patterns were most likely factor in explaining the differences in fertility operating through postponement of marriage and childbearing.

Background: From a historical perspective, the transition from a pre-industrial to a modern society is associated with increasing social status heterogamy. As individuals' 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 end of the 19th century. We ask whether marriage of unequally educated partners is related to dissimilarity in the partners' other characteristics. 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 modelling, we estimate how age difference, origin heterogamy, and ethnic heterogamy of the spouses associate with educational heterogamy. Results: The results indicate a positive relationship between educational heterogamy and marrying outside one's own ethnic or origin group, but no effect for spousal age difference. Conclusions: Our study provides new evidence about marriage markets during modernisation, specifically regarding the role of education. We show that educationally heterogamous unions in Tartu were often also more heterogamous in terms of partners' background characteristics. This suggests that the partner's 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 educational expansion and economic modernisation.

Background: Considerable regional variation existed in 19th-century infant mortality (IMR) in England and Wales. Objective: This study estimates early childhood mortality (ECMR) for over 2,000 registration subdistricts (RSDs) of England and Wales and analyses spatial and temporal variations in IMR and ECMR between 1881 and 1911. Methods: The combination of mortality statistics from the Registrar General and individual-level census data from the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) project is used to estimate spatial models of the relationship between early childhood death rates and a range of district-specific contextual variables. Results: All regions of England and Wales experienced noticeable decline in early childhood mortality, but the spatial patterns were remarkably persistent, with high mortality in London and in the mining and textile centres. The earlier decline of childhood than infant mortality produced a widening gap between them, and in early phases this development was concentrated along the East-Midlands coastal area from Suffolk to North Yorkshire, and in mid-Wales. This gap continued to widen, and in 1911 IMR was at least twice as high as ECMR in most parts of England and Wales. Conclusions: The changing spatial pattern of ECMR was influenced by a set of factors over and above those that influenced IMR, and these were related more to the disease environment than to social and economic influences. Contribution: These new estimates of early childhood mortality, at a finer spatial scale than previously possible, highlight the vast spatial variation in mortality in England and Wales. It is likely that these regional differences also manifest in variation in other demographic outcomes.

This article produces the first findings on changes in household and family structure in England and Wales during 1851–1911, using the recently available Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) – a complete count database of individual-level data extending to some 188 million records. As such, it extends and updates the important overview article published inContinuity and Changeby Michael Anderson in 1988. The I-CeM data shed new light on transitions in household structure and family life during this period, illustrating both continuities and change in a number of key areas: family composition; single parent families; living alone; extended households; childhood; leaving home and marriage patterns.