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A longitudinal, micro-level study of the effect of socioeconomic transformations on fertility mechanisms in the rural hinterland of Bologna between 1818 and 1900 (the beginning of the demographic transition) demonstrates that the premature death of a last-born child reduces the interval between two consecutive childbirths. Thus does it confirm the importance of breast-feeding in determining birth spacing. Women living in complex sharecropping households experienced a significantly higher risk of childbirth than did women in families headed by daily wage earners. In addition, the reproductive behavior of sharecroppers seemed to be substantially invariant to short-term fluctuations in prices, whereas the laborers' group experienced a negative price effect. Both descriptive and multivariate analyses indicate a slight and gradual decrease in fertility levels during the period in question.

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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This article deals with the possible existence of deliberate fertility control before the fertility transition. The timing of the fertility response to economic stress, as measured by fluctuations in grain prices, is used as a measure of deliberate, but non-parity specific, control. Birth histories from six German villages (1766–1863), including information on occupation of the husband, are used together with community-wide grain price series in a micro-level event-history analysis. The results show a negative fertility response to grain prices both in the year immediately following the price change, and with a 1-year lag. The response was also highly different between socioeconomic groups, with the most pronounced effects among the unskilled laborers. Moreover, the response in this group was very rapid, already present 3–6 months after the price change. As all involuntary fertility responses to economic hardship (e.g., malnutrition, spousal separation, and spontaneous abortion) come with a considerable time lag, the existence of such a rapid response among the lower social groups suggests that individual agency (deliberate control) was an important aspect of reproductive behavior also before the fertility transition. Cet article s'intéresse à l'existence possible d'un contrôle volontaire des naissances avant la transition de la fécondité. Le calendrier de l'évolution de la fécondité en fonction de la tension économique, mesurée par les fluctuations du prix des céréales, est utilisé comme mesure de contrôle volontaire des naissances, mais non lié à la parité. Des histoires génésiques comprenant la catégorie professionnelle du père, provenant de six villages allemands (1766-1863), sont utilisées en association avec des séries temporelles des prix des céréales au niveau communautaire pour effectuer une analyse biographique au niveau individuel. Les résultats indiquent une évolution négative de la fécondité en fonction du prix des céréales, à la fois dans l'année qui suit le changement de prix et l'année d’après. Cette évolution était très variable en fonction du groupe social, avec un effet maximal parmi les travailleurs non qualifiés. De plus, la réaction dans ce dernier groupe était très rapide, car déjà visible 3 à 6 mois après le changement de prix. Sachant que toutes les modifications involontaires de fécondité face aux difficultés économiques (par exemple à la malnutrition, aux ruptures conjugales, et aux avortements spontanés) ne se produisent qu'après un délai très long, l'existence d'une réaction si rapide parmi les groupes sociaux les plus défavorisés laisse penser que l'initiative individuelle (contrôle volontaire) était déjà, avant la transition de la fécondité, un aspect important du comportement reproducteur.