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Research on early-life mortality in contemporary and historical populations has shown that infant and child mortality tend to cluster in a limited number of high-mortality families, a phenomenon known as 'mortality clustering'. This paper is the first to review the literature on the role of the family in early-life mortality. Contemporary results, methodological and theoretical shortfalls, recent developments, and opportunities for future research are all discussed in this review. Four methodological approaches are distinguished: those based on sibling deaths, mother heterogeneity, thresholds, and excess deaths in populations. It has become clear from research to date that the death of an older child harms the survival chances of younger children in that family, and that fertility behaviour, earlier stillbirths, remarriages, and socio-economic status all explain mortality clustering to some extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a typology of different meanings of cohabitation that combines cohabiters’intentions to marry with a general attitude toward marriage, using competing risk analyses to examine whether some cohabiters are more prone than others to marry or to separate. Using data (N = 1,258) from four waves of the German Family Panel (PAIRFAM) and a supplementary study (DEMODIFF), we compared eastern and western German cohabiters of the birth cohorts 1971–73 and 1981–83. Western Germans more frequently view cohabitation as a step in the marriage process, whereas eastern Germans more often cohabit as an alternative to marriage. Taking into account marital attitudes reveals that cohabiters without marriage plans differ from those with plans in their relationship careers, and also shows that cohabiters who plan to marry despite holding a less favourable view of marriage are less likely to realize their plans than cohabiters whose intentions and attitudes are more congruent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several studies have demonstrated that stepfamily couples have a higher risk of childbearing than couples in a stable union with the same total number of children. Analysing retrospective data from a nationally representative sample of Swedish adults, we find that the risk of a second or third birth is higher when it is the first or second child in a new union. We also find a faster pace of childbearing after stepfamily formation than after a shared birth. The risk of a second birth (in total) is only a little higher in the first two years after stepfamily formation than in the first two years after a shared birth, and thereafter the risk is lower for stepfamilies. The risk of a third birth (in total) is particularly high early in the stepfamily union and remains higher than that of couples with two shared children for at least five years. The stepfamily difference was lower after than before 1980, when the Swedish government introduced parental leave incentives for short birth intervals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on population history are often based on incomplete records of life histories. For instance, in studies using data obtained from family reconstitution, the date of death is right censored (by migration) and the censoring time is never observed. Several methods for the correction of mortality estimates are proposed in the literature, most of which first estimate the number of individuals at risk and then use standard techniques to estimate mortality. Other methods are based on statistical models. In this paper all methods are reviewed, and their merits are compared by applying them to simulated and to seventeenth-century data from the English parish of Reigate. An ad hoc method proposed by Ruggles performs reasonably well. Methods based on statistical models, provided they are sufficiently realistic, give comparable accuracy and allow the estimation of several other quantities of interest, such as the distribution of migration times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies new estimates of nuptiality and marital fertility in France. It is now well known that nuptiality provided a powerful instrument of fertility control in Western European populations, at least as far back as registers of vital events can take researchers in the sixteenth century. The modern emergence of fertility control within marriage, often called the fertility transition, was therefore a modification of a preexisting system of demographic regulation, and raises the question how the relationship between the course of the transition. Family reconstitutions are an ideal source for marital fertility rates, but are generally not adequate to the task of measuring nuptiality, because of the openness of village populations. The marital fertility rates obtained from family reconstitutions can be used to derive nuptiality estimates, provided total legitimate fertility can be estimated from other sources. The alternative method used here relies on methods of population reconstruction to create artificial "censuses" of the female population by age and marital status at regular intervals from knowledge of vital registration and a few assumptions.

Ruggles has shown that, if marriage and migration are independent phenomena, age at marriage estimates derived from family reconstitution studies can be misleading because those who marry late are more likely to have migrated before marriage than those who marry early. Marriage age estimates based on 'stayers' will therefore be lower than would be the case if 'leavers' were also included. Whether this was true of English reconstitution data, however, is an empirical rather than a logical question. Evidence from the Census of 1851 suggests that the mean age at marriage of `leavers' was very similar to that of `stayers' (i.e. that marriage and migration were not independent phenomena). But, though age at marriage was much the same in the two groups, the proportions ever marrying were very different: celibacy was far commoner among `stayers' than among `leavers' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the family reconstitution and relates it demographically to migration, marriage and mortality. Family reconstitution is the process of linking together historical parish records of baptisms, marriages, and burials; it yields a set of demographic life-histories between parishes scattered their life-histories from which rates can be calculated. People who moved their demographic life-histories across the countryside. As they need to be usually re-assembled, they must be excluded from most demographic analyses. Most of the concern about the effects of the exclusion of migrants has focused on the question whether demographic behavior of migrants and non-migrants was similar, or not. It has been less commonly noted that migration can bias estimates of such measures as mean age at marriage and life expectancy, even if age-specific demographic rates of migrants and non-migrants were identical. The most significant consequence of correcting the censoring biases is probably the upward revision of age at marriage.

A number of family reconstitution studies have been carried out in England in recent years under the aegis of the SSRC Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. For this article the data from 13 such reconstitutions were pooled to enable the chief fertility, mortality and nuptiality characteristics of the population to be calculated (there is reason to suppose that the pooled data reflect national trends fairly closely). Results are presented for half-century time periods, 1600-49 to 1750-99. Marital fertility changed remarkably little over the two centuries but there were major changes in nuptiality and also substantial changes in mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of evidence from reproductive histories of couples married between 1750 and 1899 in a sample of 14 German villages strongly suggests that fecundity, as defined by the underlying level of natural fertility, significantly increased between the end of the eighteenth and the onset of the twentieth century. An examination of the separate components which led to the increased fecundity are clearest with respect to an increase in fecundabiity. The evidence, although not entirely consistent, was also suggestive of a reduction in the non-susceptible period following birth. Little change appears to have occurred in terms of primary sterility. One factor which may have been related to the observed changes in fecundity is a marked decrease in the degree of seasonality of births during the same period. Evidence from other family reconstitution studies for German villages generally confirms the rise in underlying natural fertility observed for our sample. The extent to which these findings are representative of other parts of Europe is an intriguing topic for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is informed that family reconstitution involves the reassembling of family units from recorded baptisms, burials and marriages. Therefore, the data found in the parish register must be both reliable and complete. In assessing the credibility of results derived from family reconstitution studies it is as important to have confidence in the representativeness of these results as in the reliability of the data on which they are based. In order to be sure that the results derived from family reconstitution are based on a complete evidential basis, it is necessary to create various conditions to which the evidence must conform before it is included in any calculations. However, in limiting the number of examples whose registration experience conforms to these safeguards there is a possibility that our results will be based on an unrepresentative sample of the population. Historians have claimed that after 1790 the Anglican system of parochial registration broke down in many areas where population growth far outstripped the Anglican Church's ability to perform its role as a state agency. Another factor causing the deterioration of parochial registration is thought to have been the growth of dissenting religious congregations, some of whom objected to the religious role of the Anglican Church so strenuously that they disavowed it as a civil institution.