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England's fertility decline: A new exploration using digitised individual census records, 1861-1921
| Funder | Economic and Social Research Council |
|---|---|
| Recipient Organization | University of Oxford |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start Date | Sep 30, 2024 |
| End Date | Jun 29, 2028 |
| Duration | 1,368 days |
| Number of Grantees | 1 |
| Roles | Student |
| Data Source | UKRI Gateway to Research |
| Grant ID | 2928011 |
Grant Description
From 1861-1921, the average number of babies produced by English couples halved. My research contributes to our understanding of why this occurred, and more broadly why fertility declines.
By analysing three English case study localities from 1861-1921, I will examine the roles of two variables affecting fertility decisions: the availability and quality of children's educational opportunities; and the provision of local statutory or voluntary welfare. These two factors have been theorised to affect fertility since Malthus in 1798 to the 1970s World Fertility Survey.
Moreover, quantitative provisions and qualitative policies regarding education and local and statutory welfare oscillated during the period of fertility transition, and displayed immense geographic variation - therefore presenting ideal conditions for natural experiments between areas' differing socio-economic trajectories.
My proposed innovation is to marry rigorous local mixed methods primary source research - heavily qualitative in nature - with a new (2013) digitised
Sources & References
- the United Kingdom's 'integrated census microdata' (I-CeM) database. I-CeM provides individual-level digital records of the 1851-1911 censuses (with the never-before-studied 1921 census to be released next year), providing information on household, enumeration-location, occupational status, and data for reconstruction of demographic life courses. Through rigorous mixed-methods local archival research, supported examination of national and regional quantitative and qualitative extant data on living standards and working lives, in appendices held by the Board of Trade
- Registra General's Office
- Medical Officers of HeaIth, and Factory Inspectorates, will 'link' the finely detailed aggregate socio-economic and cultural characteristics of local areas, communities, and even individuals where sources permit, to their respective census fertility patterns. This will address several of the historiography's lacunas or deficiencies. First, its reliance on aggregate data, which, although useful for understanding fertility gradients and macro trends, does not illuminate the factors influencing people's fertility decisions. Second, predominantly qualitative contextual case-study fertility research has allowed penetrative analysis of individuals' fertility motivations - but these are hard to link to numeric fertility outcomes, and disaggregation of causes and effects is difficult. Third, recent analyses of digitised individual-level censuses have provided enlightening new cross-tabulated variables affecting fertility, but are limited by what the census fails to enumerate: the breadth of socio-economic and cultural experiences that can only be understood in local archives. By uniting these methodologies' strengths to address their weaknesses, a new analysis of England's fertility decline is possible, which addresses the chronologies and sources required to establish cause and effect in the multiplicity of England's fertility experiences.
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University of Oxford
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