By matching the population registers with the land tax roster, the authors examine how a family's socioeconomic status, represented by the size of landholding, affected fertility behaviors among Korean women in a village of Jeju Island for the period from 1914 to 1925. Landholding is an important indicator of a family's socioeconomic condition, especially for this historical population, the majority of whom were engaged in agricultural work. The authors' discrete-time event history model shows that women in households with larger landholding sizes had a greater risk of birth than their counterparts in households with smaller landholding sizes. However, the relationship is not linear, showing no significant difference between the two highest groups of landholding. The authors interpret the nonlinear relationship in light of economic and agricultural conditions of the island. They highlight potential contributions of their findings for historical studies of population and families in East Asia.
James Z. Lee and Cameron Campbell, Fate and Fortune in Rural China: Social Organization and Social Behavior in Liaoning, 1774-1873 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Arthur P. Wolf, "Is There Evidence of Birth Control in Late Imperial China?" Population and Development Review 27 (2001): 133-54.
2.
Lee and Campbell, Fate and Fortune in Rural China.
3.
Wang Feng, James Z. Lee, and Cameron Campbell , "Marital Fertility Control among the Qing Nobility: Implications for Two Types of Preventive Check," Population Studies49 (1995): 383-400.
4.
Steven Harrell, "The Rich Get Children: Segmentation, Stratification, and Population in Three Chekiang Lineages, 1550-1850" in Family and Population in East Asian History, ed. Susan B. Hanley and Arthur P. Wolf ( Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 81-109.
5.
However, there is some evidence as well to show the positive relationship between socioeconomic status and fertility in historical Japan. For instance, Hayami showed that women from higher social classes had a lager number of children than those from lower classes. See Akira Hayami, "Class Differences in Marriage and Fertility among Tokugawa Villagers in Mino Province," Keio Economic Studies 17 (1980): 1-16.
6.
Susan B. Hanley, "Family and Fertility in Four Tokugawa Villages," in Family and Population in East Asian History, ed. Susan B. Hanley and Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press , 1985), 196-228.
7.
Arthur P. Wolf and Susan B. Hanley , "Introduction," in Family and Population in East Asian History, ed. Susan B. Hanley and Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press , 1985), 1-12.
8.
Mary C. Brinton, "Christmas Cakes and Wedding Cakes: The Social Organization of Japanese Women's Life Course," in Japanese Social Organization, ed. Takie S. Lebra (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 79-107; Robert W. Hodge and Naohiro Ogawa, Fertility Change in Contemporary Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
9.
Susan B. Hanley and Arthur P. Wolf, eds., Family and Population in East Asian History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985); Ronald P. Toby, "Review of Family and Population in East Asian History by Susan Hanley and Arthur Wolf," Journal of the American Oriental Society 110 (1990): 114-115.
10.
For recent historical studies of Korean population, see Kuentae Kim, "Eighteenthcentury Korean Marriage Customs: The Tansng Census Registers," Continuity and Change 20 (2005), 193-209; Sangkuk Lee and Hyunjoon Park, "Marriage, Social Status, and Family Succession in Medieval Korea (Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries)," Journal of Family History 33 (2008), 123-38. Park and Lee's article surveys data sources and current studies of historical demography available in Korea: Hyunjoon Park and Sangkuk Lee, "A Survey of Data Sources for Studies of Family and Population in Korean History," History of the Family 13 (2008), 258-67.
11.
Lee and Campbell, Fate and Fortune in Rural China.
12.
Also see Wang Feng, Cameron Campbell, and James Z. Lee, "Agency, Hierarchies, and Reproduction in Northeast China, 1789-1840," in Prudence and Pressure: Reproduction in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900, ed. Noriko Tsuya, Wang Feng, George Alter, James Lee, et al. (forthcoming).
13.
Hanley, "Family and Fertility"; Hayami, "Class Differences in Marriage and Fertility."
14.
Shannon C. Stokes and Wayne A. Schutjer, "Access to Land and Fertility in Developing Countries," in Rural Development and Human Fertility, ed. Wayne Schutjer and C. Shannon Stokes (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 195-215.
15.
Ronald D. Lee and Rodolfo A. Bulatao, "The Demand for Children: A Critical Essay," in Determinants of Fertility in Developing Countries , ed. Rodolfo A. Bulatao and Ronald D. Lee (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 233-87.
16.
Eva Mueller and Kathleen Short, "Effects of Income and Wealth on the Demand for Children," in Determinants of Fertility in Developing Countries , ed. Rodolfo A. Bulatao and Ronald D. Lee (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 590-642.
17.
Patricia W. Mosena and John Stoeckel, "Correlates of Desired Family Size in a Rural Area of Bangladesh," Journal of Comparative Family Studies3 (1972): 207-16.
18.
Lee and Bulatao, "The Demand for Children."
19.
Lee and Bulatao, "The Demand for Children."
20.
Kuentae Kim, "Spheres of Marriage Ties in Cheju Island during the Late 18th through the Early 20th Centuries" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, 2007).
21.
Kim, "Spheres of Marriage Ties."
22.
Byeong-gyu Son , "Census Taking of Hamo-ri, Jeju in the Late Daehan Empire and the Early Japanese Rule: Comparing the Two, Kwangmu-hojeok and Minjeokbu" [in Korean], Research on East Asian's Culture54 (2006): 1-37.
23.
In other words, despite researchers' estimation of 1915 and 1923 as the years of compilation, the 1915 register includes some births that occurred before 1915, and the 1923 register includes some births that occurred after 1923. By including births between January 1914 and December 1925, we could include almost all births recorded in the two registers.
24.
About half of the cases have a missing marriage date. We conducted a supplementary analysis with only those for whom the marriage date was known. In the analysis, we started observing a woman from the age of marriage rather than the age of twenty or the age entering the 1915 register (i.e., marital fertility). The result of the supplementary analysis showed that the relationship between landholding and fertility was similar to the relationship shown in this study.
25.
Kazuo Yamaguchi , Event History Analysis ( Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991)
26.
Wolf and Hanley, "Introduction."
27.
Lee and Campbell, Fate and Fortune in Rural China.
28.
Feng, Lee, and Campbell, "Marital Fertility Control"; Wolf and Hanley, "Introduction."
29.
Lee and Campbell, Fate and Fortune in Rural China.
30.
Lee and Bulatao, "The Demand for Children."
31.
Se-Mi O.h, "Consuming the Modern: The Everyday in Colonial Seoul, 1915-1937" (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2008 ).
32.
John Bongaarts, "The Proximate Determinants of Natural Marital Fertility," in Determinants of Fertility in Developing Countries, ed. Rodolfo A. Bulatao and Ronald D. Lee (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 103-37; James Trussell, Laurence Grummer-Strawn, German Rodriguez, and Mark Vanlandingham, "Trends and Differentials in Breastfeeding Behaviour: Evidence from the WFS and DHS," Population Studies 46 (1992): 285-307.
33.
Arthur P.Wolf and Chieh-shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press , 1980).
34.
Park and Lee, "A Survey of Data Sources."
35.
Hiroshi Miyajima , "The Present Situation and the Subject of Korean Population History," Sungkyunkwan Journal of East Asian Studies2 (2004): 1-9.
