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

  Author: Wilcox, Jerry

  Date: 1982-fall

  Language : en

  Find in a library: 2514766

  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).

  Tags Connecticut River Valley, Ethnicity and Collective Identity, Family, Hampden County MA, Hampshire County MA, Irish Americans, Nonfiction, Nonfiction -- Demography, Nonfiction -- History -- Labor and Social, Nonfiction -- Immigration, Springfield MA