The Quality of Vital Registration of the Jews in East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century
Studia Judaica 23 (2020), nr 2 (46), s. 235–280 doi:10.4467/24500100STJ.20.013.13656 A JEWISH PALIMPSEST (DEMOGRAPHY, SOCIETY, MEMORY): FROM EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE TO ISRAEL IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES Tomasz M. Jankowski https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2695-7324 The Quality of Vital Registration of the Jews in East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century Abstract: Vital records are one of the main sources providing insight into the demographic past. For most of the nineteenth century, however, the degree of under-registration of vital events among Jews was much higher than among non- Jews. These omissions undermine the credibility of demographic data on fertility and mortality published in contemporary statistical yearbooks. The analysis shows that the male-to-female ratio at birth aggregated on a regional level reveals the highest under-registration among Jews in the Russian Empire, including Congress Poland, until World War I. On the other hand, Prussian registration covers the Jewish population most completely and already in the 1820s shows no signs of under-registration. Despite the general low quality of registration systems, re- cords from selected individual towns still pass quality tests. Top-down imposition of the registration duties, corporatism, defective legal regulations, bureaucratic inefficiency and personal characteristics of civil registrars were the main reasons for under-registration. Keywords: vital registration, vital statistics, historical demography, demography of Jews, sex ratio at birth, under-registration. Słowa kluczowe: akta stanu cywilnego, ruch naturalny, demografia historyczna, demografia Żydów, wskaźnik maskulinizacji, braki w rejestracji. 236 TOMASZ M. JANKOWSKI Introduction The historical demography of the Jews in east-central Europe has relatively infrequently been the subject of study.1 Although the Jews constituted the largest minority in this territory, the extent of research on the Jewish popu- lation is disproportionately small.
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