Prolific Immigrants and Dwindling Natives? : Fertility Patterns in Western Massachusetts, 1850 and 1880

Wilcox, Jerry

Quantitative analysis of fertility rates among Irish and French Canadian immigrant families as compared to native Massachusetts families in two years of western Massachusetts census reporting: 1850 and 1880. Unique contribution to analyses of 19th-century fertility rate decline in the United States, with review and discussion of relevant theories in demography and family studies concerned with that time period: class, education, immigration, women's status, kinship structures, and others. Brief discussion of fertility in pre-emigration Ireland, France, and French Canada. Descriptions of the historical and geographical western Massachusetts context, including demographics and industry. Includes statistical charts. Research questions, from the authors: "Was immigrant fertility in western Massachusetts high relative to other nineteenth-century populations? Was native fertility relatively low? How large was the native-immigrant fertility gap? And, finally, was the gap eliminated, reduced, or widened by adjusting for a) age distribution of wives; b) rural versus industrializing town versus urban residence; c) census year - 1850-1880; d) husband's occupation; e) wife's age at maternity; and f) length of childbearing span?" (269).

1982-fall

en

Journal article

1850 & 1880

Hampshire County and Hampden County, Massachusetts

0363-1990

Journal of Family History

7

265-288