The British Fertility Decline: Demographic Transition in the Crucible of the Industrial Revolution

by Michael S. Teitelbaum

Overview

Building on the theory of the demographic transition, Michael S. Teitelbaum assesses the dramatic decline in British fertility from 1841 to 1931 in terms of social transformations associated with the Industrial Revolution. His book is an intensive analysis of the British case at both county and national levels.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691612256
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Office of Population Research , #621
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

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The British Fertility Decline

Demographic Transition in the Crucible of the Industrial Revolution

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By Michael S. Teitelbaum

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-09405-2

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

It is now a commonplace that historical understanding requires knowledge of the history of population change. This is particularly evident with reference to the European Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One of the major social changes of this period was the near-universal decline in fertility — a decline which across the whole of the European continent amounted to as much as 50 percent between 1850 and 1930. It is fair to say that this fertility decline represents one of the major transformations of European life. Yet the change was by no means homogeneous. The various regions and countries differed substantially in the original levels of fertility from which the decline took place, the timing of the decline, and the mechanisms of control employed. And unhappily, despite its central importance to our understanding of history and of socioeconomic forces, the nature and sources of this decline are but little understood. As Habakkuk (1971, p. 53) points out, "the development of the small planned family is still not completely charted. We know little about its chronology, about the methods by which it was effected, and about its fundamental causes." The goal of the present work is to provide a better chart of this general process by means of intensive analysis of the experience of the British Isles.

The Theory of the Demographic Transition

The best-known "explanation" of the European fertility decline is the theory of the demographic transition. Its basic premises are descriptive, with the history of population divided into three "stages."

The first stage, viewed as characteristic of the human population throughout most of its history, achieves a long-term equilibrium of population size by high birth rates and high death rates. Infant mortality is high, and fertility of women similarly high, although probably never at the biological maximum of the species. The high rate of mortality is taken as inevitable in the absence of modern forms of agriculture, transport, sanitation, and medicine. Given this high rate of mortality a similarly high birth rate is required (by definition) for any population to persist. In order to maintain high fertility, societies in Stage I of the demographic transition are characterized by strong institutional pressures favoring reproduction. These institutions are strongly supported by popular beliefs both sacred and secular, and effectively enforced by a variety of societal sanctions. Therefore, they are slow to change.

In contrast to the encouragement of the birth rate by their norms and institutions, pre-industrial societies view the death rate as largely outside of institutional control. Nonetheless, the theory assumes that all societies covet health and long life, and that therefore any development that reduced mortality would be quickly adopted. In this sense the factors supporting high birth and high death rates are not consonant with one another. New organizational and technological methods of reducing mortality are rapidly seized upon by the society as soon as they become known, resulting in a continuous and relatively sharp decline in mortality. The consequence is Stage II of the demographic transition, characterized by declining mortality, but with fertility stable at pre-industrial levels. This is the first phase of the "population explosion," i.e., the rapid and unprecedented growth of population resulting from an imbalance between birth rates and death rates.

Stage III of the demographic transition is that in which the birth rate gradually declines toward equilibrium with the now low death rate. The decline in fertility is seen as conscious and rational on the part of the members of the society. However, the falling birth rate lags behind the decline in mortality due to the highly institutionalized nature of societal pressures favoring fertility. The decline in fertility cannot take place, the argument continues, until the traditional social and economic institutions supporting fertility are weakened, and new institutions emerge favoring a reduction in fertility to levels more commensurate with the lower levels of mortality. The theorists of the demographic transition attribute the adoption of the new smaller family ideal to the social and economic effects of the urban and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century. Urban and industrial life are seen as modifying substantially the role of the family in production, consumption, recreation, and education. The reduction of the importance of the family is said to weaken the social pressures favoring high fertility, since it is the extended agrarian family through which many of these pressures are funneled by the society. The value of children is reduced by the growth of compulsory or near-compulsory education, which removes the children from the potential labor force. Also, it is argued that members of societies that are approaching Stage III of the demographic transition come to recognize that there has been a substantial decline in mortality, especially infant mortality. Whatever may be their eventual family-size goals, they perceive that the number of births required to achieve a certain family size of live children is lower than before.

Under a multitude of major social transformations the pressures for high fertility weaken and the idea of conscious control of fertility gradually gains strength. The adoption of this idea is not uniform across all segments of society. Instead, the idea is adopted in the beginning by the elite, those who are both better educated and therefore aware of the changing social milieu, and who also have greater access to knowledge of methods required for reasonably effective fertility control.

In the early stages no elaborate technology of fertility control is required, but rather only less favorable marriage patterns and the use of age-old folk methods such as coitus interruptus, abortion, and various crude contraceptive devices. Later, pressures arise for more effective and convenient means of fertility control, leading to the development of more modern instrumentalities.

The Demographic Transition in Britain

There is no doubt that the processes involved in the demographic transition took place in Britain during the nineteenth century. From the middle of that century to the 1930s both mortality and fertility levels declined by about 50 percent. The course of the mortality decline has been extensively analyzed and will be discussed only peripherally in the present work. The focus here is on the course and characteristics of the fertility decline, with special attention paid to the decline of fertility within marriage.

The transition of the British Isles is of particular interest to demographic historians, primarily because of the leading role played by Britain in the Industrial Revolution and rapid urbanization which swept much of Europe during the nineteenth century. However, in addition to relatively "advanced" England, the British Isles also include Ireland, with its very low levels of industrialization and urbanization, and Scotland with its highly variable levels of these characteristics. Cultural variability was also extensive, ranging from the harsh ruralism of the Western Irish and the Outer Hebridian Scots to the elegant urbanism of upper-class Victorian London. Similarly the diversity of religious affiliation was great, ranging from Irish Catholicism through Welsh Nonconformity, English Chapel, Scottish Presbyterianism, and Anglicanism. The British Isles thus provide a great range in cultural, religious, and industrial variables within one political entity.

Hence this study represents a systematic attempt to analyze the introduction of deliberate control of fertility, and mainly marital fertility, in the diverse and rapidly-changing British Isles of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The unit of analysis is generally the political subdivision of the county, and specifically of the registration county in England and Wales. It will be noted that the analyses that follow are therefore at the aggregate or ecological level of analysis and are subject to the well-known interpretive risks of the ecological fallacy. This potential problem is of sufficient importance to warrant explicit discussion.

On the Problem of Ecological Correlation

Data on fertility, mortality, and marriage behavior and on socioeconomic and cultural attributes do not exist at the individual level for nineteenth-century Britain. In principle, of course, individual-level statistics might be put together from the original census returns and vital registration documents (if they have not been lost or destroyed), but government authorities have not allowed access to these for the period under study here. Furthermore, the logical and practical problems involved in linking such nominative records are daunting indeed. Since the data published on birth registration certificates were rudimentary in scope, analysis of the socioeconomic and cultural associates of fertility behavior depends upon access to data on each individual mother's census return. But the methodological difficulties inherent in linking these two forms of records are fundamental and perhaps insoluble. Successful methods along these lines may be developed and applied in the future, when necessary data are made available, and analysis at the individual may then become possible. But in the interim (which may be decades) we are confined to the use of the aggregated tabulations which have been provided by the registrars general.

Such tabulations are at an ecological level of analysis, i.e. the data describe characteristics of aggregates of individuals rather than of individuals themselves. Each table seeks to classify nominative individuals into some more or less sensible scheme of categories, and then collapses the variety of individual behaviors and characteristics into these categorizations. With this collapsing procedure, the data become manageable and comprehensible, but considerable information is lost. Given the nature of ecological-level data, they must always be considered to be descriptive of the properties of aggregates rather than of individuals. Hence the finding of a clear-cut positive correlation between, say, fertility levels and the proportions of a population that are academics cannot be taken to mean that academics necessarily have higher fertility than other occupations, but simply that districts with a high proportion of academics are also characterized by high fertility. In other words, the loss of detailed nominative information in the original process of data aggregation by the Registrars General makes it impossible for the analyst of such an association to tell whether it is in fact the academics of the district who are responsible for the high fertility. No data are available on the actual fertility of particular occupational groups for most of our period.

Since the data are available only at the ecological level, analysis at this level is inevitable. Since ecological correlations and regressions are not equivalent to those at the individual level (W. S. Robinson, 1950), no firm inferences may be drawn from our analyses concerning the determinants of the behavior of individuals. However, ecological associations may be of great value in their own right, and need not be used (incorrectly) as substitutes for individual associations. From Durkheim onward, sociologists and other social scientists have concentrated upon the social characteristics of areas or aggregates of individuals, holding that human social behavior cannot be interpreted simply as the sum of individual psychological and behavioral states, but instead as emergent from the social context of the group or aggregate. As Menzel (1950) notes, a high ecological correlation between arrests and divorces in a given area ought not to be employed to argue that individuals who are arrested are more likely to become divorced (or vice versa), but it can properly be employed to argue that both arrests and divorces are common characteristics of the same social nexus — properties of social areas as such, rather than of individuals. As long as the nature of the analysis in question allows of such a form of generalization, the employment of ecological associations is proper and useful.

Of course, fertility may properly be viewed as a behavior both of the individual and the social aggregate. While it is obviously true that women give birth, not social groups, it may convincingly be argued that ultimately the level of fertility is determined by the overarching social norms and values that operate to control individual behavior. Hence analysis of the decline of fertility must be at the macrolevel of the society or subsocietal social aggregate. Even one of the foremost scholars of fertility behavior at the micro or individual level takes this view (Ryder, 1975):

My premise is that the ultimate level of explanation of fertility is macro-analytic, that fertility is an aggregate property, a characteristic of the groups to which the couple belong and not directly of the couple themselves. The values and norms individuals employ to decide among alternative courses of action originate in the needs of their groups, and the modes of fulfillment of those needs which have evolved within that culture. Every society has standardized solutions to its important and pervasive problems in the form of injunctions and prohibitions, constraints and inducements, designed to affect individual actions. Norms and sanctions represent a societal blueprint for channeling behavior into directions which, however the individual might regard them in the abstract, are considered essential or desirable from the viewpoint of the group. ... People are pressured to procreate.

Given this orientation, it is worth asking why we conduct surveys in which individuals are asked a lot of questions, seeing that they cannot provide the really important answers. In my view, the chief function of such surveys is to measure behavior accurately, and also to determine, from individual responses to normative questions, what problems must be resolved at the higher sociocultural level of inquiry. The most important explanatory variables are those which identify and describe the social groupings with which the individual is affiliated.

Hence in the present study, which deals with the posited fertility effects of social changes at a high level of aggregation (e.g., modernization, urbanization, industrialization, etc.), the use of ecological-level data is happily consistent with proper methodology.

Another subsidiary problem of ecological-level data arises in the development of demographic and sociocultural measures for use in analysis. Typically such measures (e.g., legitimate fertility rates in a county) are crudely standardized for the impact of the population size of the county by using ratios or proportions, e.g., the legitimate births per thousand population, or the number of industrial workers per thousand males of working age. However, as Hope (1976) and others have pointed out, the use of a series of such proportions as the variables in a multiple regression equation means that each contains a factor (the denominator) which may by definition be the same as, or highly correlated with, the denominators of the other factors. This may introduce a form of spurious correlation between ecological variables. The only way to tell is empirically — by experimentally calculating regression equations using both such standardized ratios as well as the raw numerators from which they are calculated. If the two alternative approaches lead to widely divergent results (there is no real problem if the results are similar), a theoretical decision must be made as to whether it is the number or the rate of each attribute that is under analysis.

In the present analysis, it is clearly the rates of relevant social phenomena that are under analysis, not simply crude numbers of, e.g., urban residents or literate males. Under these conditions, the question of spurious correlation need not trouble us. Kuh and Meyer (1955, p. 402) put it this way:

The question of spurious correlation quite obviously does not arise when the hypothesis to be tested has initially been formulated in terms of ratios ... spurious correlation can only exist when a hypothesis pertains to undeflated variables and the data have been divided through by another series for reasons extraneous to but not in conflict with the hypothesis framed as an exact, i.e., non-stochastic, relation.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• Figures, pg. ix
• Tables, pg. xi
• Acknowledgments, pg. xv
• Chapter 1: Introduction, pg. 1
• Chapter 2: The Social and Economic Setting from 1750 to 1913, pg. 12
• Chapter 3: Methods of Fertility Measurement, pg. 52
• Chapter 4: Trends in Overall Fertility, 1841-1931, pg. 75
• Chapter 5: Nuptiality Components of Fertility, pg. 97
• Chapter 6: Marital and Extramarital Fertility, pg. 114
• Chapter 7: Alternative "Explanatory" Models of Marital Fertility Decline, pg. 153
• Chapter 8: The Social and Economic Context of Fertility Decline, pg. 192
• Chapter 9: Conclusions, pg. 218
• Appendix: Two Sets of County Boundaries, and Erroneous Figures for County Vital Rates in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, pg. 228
• Bibliography, pg. 246
• Index, pg. 263