The Growth of Population II (sources)
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 25-05-18 15:01
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- The Growth of Population II (sources)
- Official consensuses only begin c.1800
- Registrations of birth, marriage and death was only introduced in C19th
- before that date registers of baptism, marriage and burial are a partial but not wholly satisfactory substitute
- Registrations of birth, marriage and death was only introduced in C19th
- pre-1800
- information is partial
- mostly drawn from sources not intended to serve as consensuses
- easier to find out about towns than rural areas, and about countries in north-west Europe than eastern Europe
- towns only made up about 10-20% of population
- Sources tend to come in form of:
- Private censuses
- usually limited to particular towns
- Religious enquiries
- often directed at locating minorities
- Tax assessments
- generally exclude those too poor to pay
- Private censuses
- Most pre-1800 sources count households, not individuals
- How many people are there is an 'average' household?
- How many households are exempt from paying a particular tax?
- Counts of individuals usually include only adults. How many children are missing?
- Church registers survive better for some countries than others
- Some registers were better kept than others
- Religious minorities may not appear in registers
- One register only tells you what is happening in one parish
- Registers of baptism, marriage and burial can be exploited in two ways
- Aggregative Analysis
- to estimate the total population
- If there are 16 baptisms a year in a parish and birth rate is assumed to be 32 per thousand
- it is reasonable to estimate that population of parish is about 500
- Family Reconstitution
- to see what is happening to individual families
- But if the same parish there are 13 burials a year and death rate is assumed to be 39 per thouand
- estimated population comes down to 330
- Aggregative Analysis
- Estimating population from aggregate analysis of parish registers usually involves assuming constant birth and death rates
- The assumption is unrealistic if made over a long period of a large area
- Official consensuses only begin c.1800
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