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Land Inequality and Demographic Outcomes: The Relationship between Access to Land and the Demographic System in 19th-century Rural Tuscany

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  • Manfredini, M.
  • Fornasin, A.
  • Breschi, M.

Abstract

In pre-industrial rural Italy, the disparities among smallholders, sharecroppers, and day laborers were starkly defined by their unequal access to land, which significantly influenced their living standards, family structures, and socioeconomic conditions. This paper uses nominative data from 1819 to 1859 to first explore how the different peasant categories adjusted their demographic behaviors according to their tie to the land, and then how they were possibly modified when short-term stressors, such as price increase and/or epidemics, altered the existing equilibrium.

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  • Manfredini, M. & Fornasin, A. & Breschi, M., 2025. "Land Inequality and Demographic Outcomes: The Relationship between Access to Land and the Demographic System in 19th-century Rural Tuscany," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:97:y:2025:i:c:s0014498325000154
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2025.101668
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