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This paper studies contextual effects on fertility at the onset of fertility decline in Sweden. We argue that the community exerts an influence on fertility when individuals belonging to a certain community are more similar to one another (within-area) in their reproductive behaviour than individuals living in another community (between-area). Our hypotheses are that community had a strong influence in the past but that it decreased over time as more individualistic values grew in importance. We expect that the community exerted a greater impact in the low socioeconomic groups as the elite were less constrained by proximity and, therefore, more exposed to new ideas crossing community borders. Using micro-census data from 1880, 1890, and 1900, we use multilevel analysis to estimate measures of intra-class correlation within areas. We measure net fertility by the number of own children under five living in the household to currently married women with their spouses present. Parish is used as proxy for community. Our results indicate that despite average differences in fertility across parishes, the correlation between individuals belonging to the same community is less than 2.5%, that is, only a negligible share of the number of children observed is attributable to true community effects. Contrary to our expectation, we do not find any substantial change over time. However, as expected, community has a greater impact in the low socioeconomic groups. Our findings suggest that it is who you are rather than where you live which explains fertility behaviour during the initial stages of the transition.

We study the social mobility of women by looking at the connection between migration and marriage outcomes using complete count census data for Sweden. The censuses 1880-1900 have been linked at the individual level, enabling us to follow 100,000 women from their parental home to their new marital household. Marriage market imbalances were not an important push factor for migration but we find a strong association between migration distance and marriage outcomes, both in terms of overall marriage probabilities and in terms of partner selection. These results highlight the importance of migration for women’s social mobility during industrialization.

Variations in sex ratios at birth is still an active research field and several studies in the last decades have focused on this topic. In this article, studies on the main determinant of long- and short-term trends are briefly reviewed, taking into account findings and results from different kinds of disciplines. In his early studies, Corrado Gini concluded that the human sex ratio at birth was universally stable, without significant fluctuations across time and space. However, in the last decades several authors have directly challenged these conclusions. Therefore, after summarizing the results of Gini’s research on the historical trends of the sex ratio at birth, a brief review focuses on the analyses of contemporary trends. The main determinants of the variations of the sex ratio at birth in time and space mentioned in the literature and the corresponding theoretical explanations are summarized. Special attention is paid to the recent studies on the impact of the environment, pollution and climate on the levels of sex ratio at birth., Statistica, Vol 75, No 2 (2015)

The main purpose of this paper is to define a statistical method to model mortality rates by age and sex for provincial areas in Italy. In a preliminary descriptive analysis, we demonstrate the existence of specific spatio-temporal patterns. Thus, we propose a hierarchical Bayesian model that allows area-level estimates to borrow strength from each other by exploiting spatial association of provincial mortality rates and taking into account temporal correlation. As a result, it appears that model based estimates are less variable than direct estimates.

The touristic phenomenon represents a more and more relevant factor for the social and economic development in Sardinia. For this reason, researchers and policy makers need correct data about touristic flows. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate correctly tourist flows and to provide exact measures of the tourist arrivals. In Italy, the National Institute of Statistics measures tourist flows by organizing direct, total and periodic surveys based on registrations of customers in touristic structures like hotels, camping, etc. However the official data are significant underestimated. As a matter of fact, the official source considers only the official tourist flow, since the real flow includes also a non-observed component. This hidden segment mainly comprises tourists in second homes or summer houses that official agencies generally do not take into account. The aim of this study is to measure this hidden component of the Sardinian tourism and to identify the most relevant features of these tourists. The data of the analysis was collected in 2009 and 2010 by using a survey technique based on the Time Location Sampling methodology. This survey has been carried out in the ports and the airports of the Sardinia Island, interviewing tourist before leave. A specific question registered the kind of accommodation in which tourists spent their holidays. By using specific sampling techniques, we will estimate the proportion of tourists that are not included in the official data. These proportions will be provided according to different typologies of tourists (e.g. Italian and foreign tourists) in order to identify which kind of tourists are more underestimated. Basing on some preliminary results, we can say that the hidden component of tourism in Sardinia represents almost half of the official estimations. Moreover, this phenomenon seems to be mainly related to the second houses and the houses for vacations.

There has recently been a renewed interest in the socioeconomic aspects of reproduction during the great fertility decline. While most previous work on the European fertility decline has been macro-oriented, using various kinds of aggregate data picturing of the demographic processes at regional or national level, much less has been done using micro-level data, and specifically looking at patterns across social groups. In this paper we look at the association between socioeconomic status and net fertility in Sweden’s fertility transition using micro-level census data covering the entire population around 1900. The data contain information on number of children by age, occupation of the mother and father, place of residence and household context. Coding occupations in HISCO and classifying them into a social class scheme (HISCLASS) enables us to study the impact of socioeconomic status on number of children under 5, controlling also for spatial variations in social stratification. Our results indicate that the crude socioeconomic differentials in net fertility were substantial in Sweden immediately before 1900, with the elite and the upper middle classes having considerably lower marital child-woman ratios than the working classes. However, these crude differences were partly explained by compositional differences between classes according to age, community context and spatial heterogeneity. Nonetheless, even when controlling for individual and household variables as well as parish level fixed effects, the elite group had considerably lower net fertility than the other groups.

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The study takes into account the socioeconomic differences in the reproductive behavior in the north-eastern suburban area of Bologna from the 1820s to the 1930s, considering two rural parishes during the whole nineteenth century and another sample of parishes bordering Bologna during the early decades of the twentieth century. Consequently the period in question continues up to the onset of the fertility decline, while important social, economic and demographic transformations were about to take place. Indeed, during the 1930s, the fertility decline in Italy was so evident and the national birth rates showed such evident signs of reduction that the Fascist regime promoted a policy to increase the number of births (Treves 2001).

We study the intergenerational social mobility of women by looking at how migration was associated with socioeconomic marriage mobility using complete-count census data for Sweden. The censuses 1880–1900 have been linked at the individual level, enabling us to follow almost 100,000 women from their parental home to their new marital household. Marriage market imbalances were not an important push factor for migration but we find a strong association between migration distance and marriage outcomes, both in terms of overall marriage probabilities and in terms of partner selection by SES. These results highlight the importance of migration for women's intergenerational social mobility during industrialization.

Background: The paper explores the mechanisms of the European fertility transition in northern Italy by social group. Objective: Our objective is to understand when and in which sectors of a rural society the reduction of family size began. We focus on Emilia-Romagna, a region that in the 1990s had the lowest fertility level in Italy. The core purpose of this paper is the analysis of socioeconomic status (SES) fertility differentials, especially between rural sharecroppers and landless rural workers, as well as other non-agricultural groups. Methods: Our analysis focuses on the reproductive histories of marriage cohorts in the years 1900‒1940. We perform a micro-level statistical analysis of legitimate births of parity 1+. Results: In this period fertility decline has just begun, and shows a strong decline in the post-WWI marriage cohorts. Although nonagricultural groups lead the downward trend in family size, the role of socioeconomic status means that the path of sharecropper households is atypical. Conclusions: The fertility transition proceeds by means of spacing and stopping, testifying to a new attitude towards birth control, which agricultural and nonagricultural social groups adopted in different ways. Usually, the decline in fertility progresses from nonagricultural to rural classes. In the rural world the path is inverted, going from the lower to the upper groups. Contribution: The paper contributes to the debate on the links between socioeconomic status and fertility transition in Italy. It shows that the link between household economy and control of fertility is specific to SES groups, which can follow atypical paths, compared to the known reference model. The use of microdemographic data provides evidence for the hypothesis that the fertility transition can be shaped by the specific social and economic characteristics of population subgroups.