The Social Demography of Hungarian Villages in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (With Special Attention To Sárpilis,1792-1804)

Abstract

Nine family reconstitution studies of Hungarian villages in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries indicate the appearance of fertility control linked to low age at first marriage. Studies of household structure suggest considerable variance and a higher percentage of complex households than existed in northwestern Europe, as well as the growth of this percentage. These results are scrutinized in detail in the sources of the southern Transdanubian village of Sárpilis, where there was a clear tendency of households to become complicated and for birth control to appear in relatively poorer complex households. It is hypothesized that both growing household complexity and birth control were responses to the growing scarcity of arable land.