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

Abstract

This comparative demographic study used household-level manuscript census data to explore ethnic, occupational, and rural-urban differences in fertili ty. The study region comprised two western Massachusetts counties which ex perienced industrialization, urbanization, and immigration throughout the nine teenth century. We collected one-in-ten samples of households from the federal manuscript censuses of fifteen communities. We sampled the same communities in 1850 and 1880, and coded detailed characteristics of over 2,400 households. In addition to counting the number of preteenage children in each household, we used information on the ages of women and children to estimate the length of the childbearing span. In so doing, we could refine the child-woman ratio by stan dardizing it according to the number of years a currently married woman had been at risk of bearing a child-since age 25 or since the birth of her first child. We then employed age standardization and multiple classification analysis in an attempt to rule out competing explanations of native-immigrant differences. A djustments for age at maternity and wives' age distribution rendered the Irish most prolific, but the French Canadians and 1850 natives were not far behind. Evidently, Irish and French-Canadian women had longer childbearing spans than native women in both census years, and slightly earlier maternity. The statistical adjustments failed to explain the low fertility of the 1880 natives, suggesting that they were more effective than other groups in limiting marital fertility. While fer tility levels of immigrants and 1850 natives were quite similar to those of their contemporaries in England and America, the 1880 natives were clearly atypical. By 1880, native fertility probably had dwindled to a level other American groups would not reach until after World War I. The changing occupational structure helped to magnify native-immigrant differences. Families with semiskilled and unskilled heads tended to be larger than those headed by farmers, skilled craft smen, and white-collar workers. The low and declining fertility of the middle- class natives was especially noteworthy.