Late Fertility Transition in Sardinia: the First and Second Demographic Transitions Overlapped
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Late fertility transition in Sardinia: The first and second demographic transitions overlapped Michel POULAIN1,2, Anne HERM1, Dany CHAMBRE3 and Gianni PES4 1 Estonian Institute for Population Studies, Tallinn University, Estonia 2 IACCHOS, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. 3 Gerontologist, Estaimpuis, Belgium 4 Dipartimento di Medicina Clinica e Sperimentale, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Italy Abstract Several authors reported the late fertility transition in Sardinia that started in the 1950’s within the first demographic transition and prolonged its effects till the 1980’s. For this time new generations started to be influenced by the second demographic transition. Both transitions overlapped and had joined effect on fertility outcome. This contribution is based on a classical family reconstruction from the beginning of the 19th century until now for the population of Villagrande. Our results reveal that this population had very few signs of fertility decline prior 1950. From then, the fall of fertility is evident and the drop is stronger starting from 1969. To investigate that change and its underlying factors, we carried out in-depth anthropological survey. The originality of this contribution is that it covers a period up to the end of the 20th century and covers changes linked to both the first and the second demographic transition. The context and the choice of the population investigated Numerous researchers reported the Sardinian late fertility transition and high level of marital fertility at the beginning of the 20th century (Livi Bacci 1977, Bernardi 2007). Still in 1950’s the province of Nuoro in the mountainous part of Sardinia showed the highest values for the Coale Index on marital fertility Ig among all Italian provinces during the fertility transition. More specifically some in-land regions of the island, mostly in the Nuoro province, were still recently characterized also by late maternity (Astolfi et al. 2007, 2009). The village of Villagrande is located at 700 meters above sea level in the province of Ogliastra, but the altitude of its territory ranges from sea level to Punta La Marmora at 1,834 meters. On 1 January 2013, 3,324 inhabitants lived in Villagrande (ISTAT) with agro-pastoral activities and traditional life style still prevalent. Despite the fact that until the 1960s this region was among the poorest within the island, recent economic developments brought the population of this area close to the average welfare standard of the Italian population. That population was studied recently for its exceptional male longevity (Poulain et al. 2010). 1. Data used and methods The contribution is based on a classical family reconstruction covering the beginning of the 19th century till now. Demographic genealogical data on the whole population of the village has been collected. The families are reconstructed for all mothers born in Villagrande between 1840 and 1979. An exhaustive investigation of all children ever born to mother allows including in the analysis about 1500 completed families with more than 7000 children. This corresponds to an average of 6 children born per mother up to 1950. Only women of birth cohorts starting from the 1920’s were involved in a strong decrease in fertility. The completeness of the individual demographic events is exceptional as we found 97.5% of dates of death or evidence of today’s survival of those women involved in the analysis. The criteria for selecting the married women with completed fertility history were the following: - The women or her spouse was born in Villagrande - Both survived to the end of fertility period of the women and died when living in Villagrande or are surviving and residing in 2014 in Villagrande. - No emigration is detected during the fertility period The proportion of married women with completed fertility history corresponds to 80% (Table 1) and among them 7.2% did not have any children. Table 1. Descriptive statistics on married women included in the analysis by decade of birth. With completed Decades of birth Married women fertility history % completed 1840-1849 78 28 35,9% 1850-1859 91 43 47,3% 1860-1869 102 66 64,7% 1870-1879 106 65 61,3% 1880-1889 125 90 72,0% 1890-1899 126 89 70,6% 1900-1909 148 116 78,4% 1910-1919 149 127 85,2% 1920-1929 174 143 82,2% 1930-1939 161 148 91,9% 1940-1949 145 135 93,1% 1950-1959 161 155 96,3% 1960-1969 177 175 98,9% 1970-1979 123 123 100,0% TOTAL 1866 1503 80.5% 2. Analysis and results The change in marital fertility is identified by using a standardized index with the marital fertility rates for women born before 1910 experiencing a natural fertility regime as standard. Then the standardized fertility rate is calculated by reporting the observed number of legitimate births to the expected number of new-born obtained by applying the standard natural fertility rates to the number of married women by single year of age between 15 and 49 (Figure 1). The trends appearing in Figure 1 are the following: 1. A lower level during WWI (- 10%) 2. A recuperation phase from 1919 till 1922 (+10%) 3. A slight decrease during the ‘20s up to 1930 (- 7%) 4. A relative stability during the ‘30s and the WWII up to 1944 5. A lower level during the post-war years 1945-1947 when Sardinia experienced difficult economic conditions. 6. A short recuperation during the year 1948-1952. 7. A sharp decrease emerged in the middle of the ‘50s and the ‘60s (-20%) 8. A stronger decrease starting in 1969 to reach less than 40% of the natural fertility level in 1982 (that 9. A stabilization at that level after 1982. Figure 1. Standardized marital fertility index computed by reporting the observed number of legitimate births to the expected number of new-born obtained by applying the standard natural fertility rates to the number of married women by single year of age between 15 and 49. We analysed the marital fertility by considering completed families of married women born between 1840 and 1979. The traditional family life started relatively late in Villagrande. The proportion of late first marriages (above 25 years for women and 35 years for men) was always important (Figure 2). According to the Villagrande database, the mean age of women at first childbirth increased slowly from age 24 years in 1870 to 28 years for the beginning of WWII, decreased thereafter during the first demographic transition, and grew sharply in the 1990s in the context of the second demographic transition with a peak up to 33 years (Figure 3). Such a high age at first childbirth have never been observed in Villagrande in the past according to available data. Figure 2. Proportion of late marriages by gender (above 25 years for women and 35 years for men) Figure 3. Mean age of women at first childbirth by decade of birth of that child 34 32 30 28 26 24 22 20 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 -7 -8 -9 -0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 The mean age at last child has always been very high in Villagrande (Figure 4). From the end of XIX century up to the WWII it levelled steady above 41 years. Thereafter during the first phase of the fertility transition at the end of the XX century it felt quickly to 33 years. During the second phase of the fertility transition in the first decade of the XXI century a sharp increase appeared that brought the mean age of women at last childbirth about 37 years nowadays. Figure 4. Mean age of mothers at last child by decade of birth of their last child 42 40 38 36 34 32 30 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 3 -9 -0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -0 -1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 The average number of children ever born in completed families to women up to the end of their fertility period was still higher than 5 children per women in the 1960s. Yet starting from women that had their last child in 1930’s, the average number of children per woman turned to continuous slow decrease. In the 1970s it decreased more sharply in synchrony with the decrease of the mean age of women at the last childbirth. As shown in figure 5, the average number of children per woman at the end of fertility period remained close to 2 children since last decade of XX century. Figure 5. Number of ever born children to married woman by decade of the last childbirth 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1890-99 1900-09 1910-19 1920-29 1930-39 1940-49 1950-59 1960-69 1970-79 1980-89 1990-99 2000-09 2010-13 The figure 6 shows that the de facto duration of the fertility period of married women has decreased from more than 15 years as average for women born in XIX century to less than 5 years for women who were born in the 1970’s.