IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/eurpop/v20y2004i2d10.1023_beujp.0000033860.39537.e2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Birth Spacing in the Netherlands. The Effects of Family Composition, Occupation and Religion on Birth Intervals, 1820–1885

Author

Listed:
  • Jan Van Bavel

    (Catholic University of Leuven)

  • Jan Kok

    (International Institute of Social History)

Abstract

In this article, Dutch family reconstructions from the period 1820–1885 are analyst. Cox regression on birth intervals discloses that couples deliberately increased birth intervals already before the onset of the fertility transition. Spacing was not related to a targeted family size or to the sex composition of the family. Rather, the (temporary) burden of young, dependent children induced the parents to delay the next conception. Catholics and orthodox Protestants had shorter birth intervals than liberal Protestants, either because they rejected breastfeeding or because they were reluctant to experiment with birth spacing. Relatively long birth intervals were prevalent in the lowest social groups, whereas farmers and the self-employed middle class tended towards short intervals.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan Van Bavel & Jan Kok, 2004. "Birth Spacing in the Netherlands. The Effects of Family Composition, Occupation and Religion on Birth Intervals, 1820–1885," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 20(2), pages 119-140, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eurpop:v:20:y:2004:i:2:d:10.1023_b:eujp.0000033860.39537.e2
    DOI: 10.1023/B:EUJP.0000033860.39537.e2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1023/B:EUJP.0000033860.39537.e2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/B:EUJP.0000033860.39537.e2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. S. Philip Morgan & Rosalind Berkowitz King, 2001. "Why Have Children in the 21st Century? Biological Predisposition, Social Coercion, Rational Choice," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 3-20, March.
    2. Jane Miller & James Trussell & Anne Pebley & Barbara Vaughan, 1992. "Birth spacing and child mortality in bangladesh and the Philippines," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 29(2), pages 305-318, May.
    3. John Knodel, 1987. "Starting, stopping, and spacing during the early stages of fertility transition: The experience of German village populations in the 18th and 19th centuries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 24(2), pages 143-162, May.
    4. repec:ucp:bkecon:9789053560457 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Douglas Anderton & Lee Bean, 1985. "Birth spacing and fertility limitation: a behavioral analysis of a nineteenth century frontier population," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 22(2), pages 169-183, May.
    6. Douglas Ewbank, 1989. "Estimating birth stopping and spacing behavior," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 26(3), pages 473-483, August.
    7. Timothy Guinnane & Barbara Okun & James Trussell, 1994. "What do we know about the timing of fertility transitions in europe?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 31(1), pages 1-20, February.
    8. Ulla Larsen & Jane Menken, 1989. "Measuring sterility from incomplete birth histories," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 26(2), pages 185-201, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paul Rotering & Hilde Bras, 2019. "The age difference between spouses and reproduction in 19th century Sweden," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(37), pages 1059-1090.
    2. Gregory Clark & Neil Cummins & Matthew Curtis, 2020. "Twins Support the Absence of Parity-Dependent Fertility Control in Pretransition Populations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(4), pages 1571-1595, August.
    3. Weisdorf, Jacob & Cinnirella, Francesco & Klemp, Marc, 2012. "Malthus in the Bedroom: Birth Spacing as a Preventive Check Mechanism in Pre-Modern England," CEPR Discussion Papers 9116, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Francesco Cinnirella & Marc Klemp & Jacob Weisdorf, 2017. "Malthus in the Bedroom: Birth Spacing as Birth Control in Pre-Transition England," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(2), pages 413-436, April.
    5. Guinnane Timothy W., 2006. "Der europäische Geburtenrückgang: Überblick, Erklärungen und Stand der Forschung," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 47(2), pages 249-273, December.
    6. Tommy Bengtsson & Martin Dribe, 2006. "Deliberate control in a natural fertility population: Southern Sweden, 1766–1864," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 43(4), pages 727-746, November.
    7. Martin Kolk, 2011. "Deliberate Birth Spacing in Nineteenth Century Northern Sweden [L’espacement volontaire des naissances au 19e siècle dans le Nord de la Suède]," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 27(3), pages 337-359, August.
    8. Francesco Cinnirella & Marc Klemp & Jacob Weisdorf, 2019. "Further Evidence of Within-Marriage Fertility Control in Pre-Transitional England," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(4), pages 1557-1572, August.
    9. David Sven Reher & Alberto Sanz‐Gimeno, 2007. "Rethinking Historical Reproductive Change: Insights from Longitudinal Data for a Spanish Town," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 33(4), pages 703-727, December.
    10. Martin Dribe & Francesco Scalone, 2010. "Detecting Deliberate Fertility Control in Pre-transitional Populations: Evidence from six German villages, 1766–1863 [Mise en évidence d’un contrôle volontaire des naissances dans des populations p," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 26(4), pages 411-434, November.
    11. Jona Schellekens & Frans Poppel, 2012. "Marital Fertility Decline in the Netherlands: Child Mortality, Real Wages, and Unemployment, 1860–1939," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(3), pages 965-988, August.
    12. Fabian Drixler, 2015. "Conjuring the Ghosts of Missing Children: A Monte Carlo Simulation of Reproductive Restraint in Tokugawa Japan," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(2), pages 667-703, April.
    13. Thompson, Kristina & Portrait, France & Lindeboom, Maarten, 2022. "Is paternal height related to fertility outcomes? Evidence from the Netherlands during the secular growth trend," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    14. Corey Sparks, 2009. "An application of the variable-r method to subpopulation growth rates in a 19th century agricultural population," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 21(2), pages 23-64.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles Wetherell & Andrejs Plakans, 1997. "Fertility and Culture in Eastern Europe: A Case Study of Riga, Latvia, 1867–1881," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 13(3), pages 243-268, September.
    2. Frans van Poppel & David Reher & Alberto Sanz-Gimeno & María Sanchez-Dominguez & Erik Beekink, 2012. "Mortality decline and reproductive change during the Dutch demographic transition," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 27(11), pages 299-338.
    3. Jessica Todd & Paul Winters & Guy Stecklov, 2012. "Evaluating the impact of conditional cash transfer programs on fertility: the case of the Red de Protección Social in Nicaragua," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 267-290, January.
    4. Jeanne Cilliers & Martine Mariotti, 2019. "Stop! Go! What can we learn about family planning from birth timing in settler South Africa, 1800-1910?," CEH Discussion Papers 05, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    5. Martin Dribe & Francesco Scalone, 2010. "Detecting Deliberate Fertility Control in Pre-transitional Populations: Evidence from six German villages, 1766–1863 [Mise en évidence d’un contrôle volontaire des naissances dans des populations p," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 26(4), pages 411-434, November.
    6. Ian M. Timæus & Tom A. Moultrie, 2020. "Pathways to Low Fertility: 50 Years of Limitation, Curtailment, and Postponement of Childbearing," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(1), pages 267-296, February.
    7. Douglas Ewbank, 1989. "Estimating birth stopping and spacing behavior," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 26(3), pages 473-483, August.
    8. Francesco Cinnirella & Marc Klemp & Jacob Weisdorf, 2017. "Malthus in the Bedroom: Birth Spacing as Birth Control in Pre-Transition England," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(2), pages 413-436, April.
    9. Martin Kolk, 2011. "Deliberate Birth Spacing in Nineteenth Century Northern Sweden [L’espacement volontaire des naissances au 19e siècle dans le Nord de la Suède]," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 27(3), pages 337-359, August.
    10. Tommy Bengtsson & Martin Dribe, 2006. "Deliberate control in a natural fertility population: Southern Sweden, 1766–1864," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 43(4), pages 727-746, November.
    11. Douglas Anderton, 1989. "Comment on Knodel’s “starting, stopping, and spacing during the early stages of fertility transition”," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 26(3), pages 467-470, August.
    12. Ian M. Timæus & Tom A. Moultrie, 2008. "On Postponement and Birth Intervals," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 34(3), pages 483-510, September.
    13. David Sven Reher & Alberto Sanz‐Gimeno, 2007. "Rethinking Historical Reproductive Change: Insights from Longitudinal Data for a Spanish Town," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 33(4), pages 703-727, December.
    14. Hilde Bras & Reto Schumacher, 2019. "Changing gender relations, declining fertility? An analysis of childbearing trajectories in 19th-century Netherlands," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(30), pages 873-912.
    15. Sascha Becker & Francesco Cinnirella & Ludger Woessmann, 2010. "The trade-off between fertility and education: evidence from before the demographic transition," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 177-204, September.
    16. Timothy W. Guinnane, 2011. "The Historical Fertility Transition: A Guide for Economists," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 589-614, September.
    17. Virginia Sanchez Marcos & Ezgi Kaya & Nezih Guner, 2017. "Labor Market Frictions and Lowest Low Fertility," 2017 Meeting Papers 1015, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Guinnane, Timothy & Streb, Jochen, 2019. "Bismarck to no Effect: Fertility Decline and the Introduction of Social Insurance in Prussia," Working Papers 13, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.
    19. Francesco Cinnirella & Marc P. B. Klemp & Jacob L. Weisdorf, 2012. "Malthus in the Bedroom: Birth Spacing as a Preventive Check Mechanism in Pre-Modern England," CESifo Working Paper Series 3936, CESifo.
    20. Cummins, Neil & Clark, Gregory & Curtis, Matthew, 2019. "Twins Support Absence of Parity-Dependent Fertility Control in Pre-Transition Western European Populations," CEPR Discussion Papers 13539, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:eurpop:v:20:y:2004:i:2:d:10.1023_b:eujp.0000033860.39537.e2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.