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Les différences régionales ont toujours été présentes dans l'histoire socioéconomique de l'Italie, et elles ont profondément marqué la démographie de chaque région. La mortalité maternelle compte parmi ces différences, dans son rapport aux dépenses de santé publique, aux sages femmes, au rôle social de la femme, à l'analphabétisme et l'incroyance en la science médicale, et au statut socioéconomique. Le but de cet article est précisément d'éclairer les différentiels régionaux de mortalité maternelle en Italie entre 1887 et 1955, ainsi que leur rôle dans le déclin d'un tel phénomène. L'analyse utilise les statistiques officielles sur les causes de décès ; ces statistiques commencent à couvrir tout le territoire national en 1887. L'étude montre que les régions italiennes du Sud présentent les plus faibles valeur de mortalité maternelle, surtout au début de la période étudiée, probablement à cause du taux d'emploi féminin dans les industries, inférieur à celui des régions du Nord, et à cause d'une tendance plus forte à l'accouchement à domicile, qui peut réduire le risque d'infections, étant donné les très forts taux de mortalité due à cette cause documentés dans les maternités avant l'introduction de techniques antiseptiques.

AbstractFew studies have dealt with the issue of people living alone in pretransitional rural populations. Alone by choice or circumstances, usually poor and sometimes stigmatised, solitaries often had a hard life. This article analyses the characteristics and life-histories of people living alone in two rural villages in nineteenth-century Italy with the aim of understanding whether and how solitaries managed to find a way out from solitude. The results show that solitaries got married, joined another household, and especially emigrated more than the rest of the population, which is a strong indication of their willingness to break out of solitariness. The individuation of the demographic profile associated with such specific behaviours, namely being male, young, and widowed, allowed us also to draw some hypotheses on the role of availability and quality of social connections on the chances to escape from a solitary condition, as well as on the characteristics of migratory flows of solitaries from the countryside to the cities.

AbstractThe elevated levels of protection, assistance, and care enjoyed by the elderly living in complex households has long been a key assumption of many family system theories. However, although this hypothesis has been demonstrated for contemporary contexts, quantitative evidence for past populations is particularly scarce, if not nonexistent. This article investigates the relationship between old-age mortality and living arrangements in a mid–nineteenth century Tuscan population, where the joint family system of sharecroppers coexisted alongside the nuclear system of day laborers. Our findings demonstrate that within complex households, the complexity of relationships, gender inequalities, and possible competition for care and resources among the most vulnerable household members—namely, the elderly and the young—weakens the assumption that the elderly benefitted from lower rates of old-age mortality.

Résumé Cet article porte sur la relation existant entre richesse et fécondité dans un village toscan à la démographie pré-transitionnelle, Casalguidi au milieu du xix e siècle. Cet enjeu est très important en démographie historique car les grands traits des populations caractérisées par une fécondité naturelle et l'absence de contrôle volontaire des naissances ne sont pas encore tous dévoilés. Grâce à des données à l'échelle micro, nous reconstruisons non seulement les parcours de vie individuels et familiaux des habitants de Casalguidi, mais encore nous disposons de leur niveau de richesse année après année. Nos résultats suggèrent que dans cette population rurale toscane, il existait des différences de fécondité en fonction de la richesse dès avant que la transition démographique ne commence. Les mères vivant dans des ménages aisés étaient marquées par une fécondité supérieure à celle des couches les plus pauvres. Ce trait entretenait aussi un lien avec la mortalité infantile inférieure des familles riches.

Résumé Grâce à une source étatique antérieure à l'Unité italienne, qui s'est révélée d'une précision remarquable et que nous avons complétée par une plongée dans les archives paroissiales locales, nous avons pu observer, au sein d'une zone de collines de l'actuelle province de Parme au milieu du xix e siècle, la présence massive d'individus – le plus souvent des enfants et des jeunes gens – définis par la source elle-même comme « Figli dell'Ospedale » (Pupilles de l'Hôpital). « L'Ospedale degli Esposti di Parma » (hôpital des Enfants trouvés) était une institution destinée, comme tant d'autres à l'époque, à la sauvegarde et à la prise en charge de l'enfance abandonnée, puis au placement des enfants assistés auprès de familles de la région. Dans ces foyers d'accueil, les nourrices s'occupaient d'élever les petits enfants, en échange d'un dédommagement versé par l'institution. Au milieu du xix e siècle, la commune de Pellegrino Parmense représentait, par les caractéristiques mêmes de son territoire mais aussi en raison de son type d'économie qui en faisait un espace spécifique, le lieu idéal au sein de l'ensemble du duché de Parme, où faire grandir les enfants abandonnés. Les sources utilisées, pour l'essentiel un recensement de l'année 1849 portant sur l'ensemble de la zone étudiée, nous ont permis d'évaluer la dimension atteinte par ce phénomène. En outre, pour un espace plus limité correspondant à l'une des paroisses de la commune, la paroisse d'Iggio, et grâce aux actes de mariage de celle-ci, nous avons pu suivre le destin des nombreux enfants trouvés envoyés en ce lieu par l'hôpital de Parme, et en particulier analyser les comportements démographiques des enfants abandonnés, là où ils vivaient une fois sortis de l'hôpital.

In this study, we investigate the extent to which social norms and cultural constraints might affect the genetic contribution of remarriage to future generations in a mid–19th century Italian population. By reconstructing the life histories of the inhabitants of Casalguidi, 1,028 marriages were recorded and analyzed. Frequency and reproductive pattern of remarriages were found to play a quantitatively important role in the process of population renewal, featuring 20 percent of total unions and 12 percent of total children borne between 1820–58. Cultural patterns shaped the access to remarriage, but widows resulted more open than widowers in the partner choice. Furthermore, remarriages were more likely consanguineous than first unions because of socioeconomic reasons. As a result, a genotypic differentiation between the offspring of first marriage and remarriage was found. However, the lower intensity of female remarriage and the predominance of widowers' unions limited the potential differentiation in the gene pool of offspring.

AbstractThis article looks at the key factors affecting the connection between peasant family size and farm size in Italy in 1930–1931. The association between farm size and family size was analyzed using a new dataset merging data drawn from both the Population Census of 1931 and the Census of Agriculture of 1930. We found a strict association between peasant family size, here considered as a production unit, and the surface area of the farm. The results seem to correspond to different causal relationship between family size and farm size according to access to land, and form of tenure. In some contexts, where sharecropping was widespread, farm size defines the size of the family. In others where small land ownership prevailed, it seems that family size shapes the size of the farm. In this study we propose a new explanation for peasant family size in the Fascist period. This is done adopting a cross-sectional perspective, providing a geographical analysis based on the 786 agrarian areas that formed the national territory in that period.

AbstractEducation has been frequently claimed to shape demographic outcomes. Mortality, fertility, and nuptiality have all been attested to be affected to some extent by education attainment. This article investigates the effects of education on fertility over time in a rural Italian community once controlled for potential confounders. Using individual-level data drawn from various sources, the study analyzes the role of education in shaping reproductive behaviors not only during the demographic transition (1890–1960) but also in the pretransitional period (1819–59). The results highlight the contrasting effects of literacy on fertility, which passed from a positive association in the ancien régime to a negative one in the transitional phase. Educated couples were therefore forerunners in the process of fertility decline because they were not only in the position to be the most pressed to control reproduction but also because they were likely aware of reproductive mechanisms, had the knowledge of more effective birth-control methods, had the economic possibility to get them, and had the necessary capacity to use them.

This paper aims at presenting some health maps of a historical population. The studies on the health status of past populations are usually focused on the causes of death. Our purpose is to present some descriptive analyses on non-deadly diseases. The present work focuses on the province of Friuli (north-eastern Italy) in the second half of the nineteenth century. The used sources are military call-up records. We collected about 300,000 records relative to military recruitment that took place between 1866 and 1909 (birth cohorts 1846-1890). Our main concern was the health status of the 20-year male population, and its association with environmental, socio economic and genetic factors. Generally speaking, we observe that the northern mountain area was the most advantaged, while young adults from the eastern and western parts of the province were the most disadvantaged. A lot of factors and causes contributed to determine the spatial distribution of specific diseases in Friuli, whilst others remain unknown because simple descriptive analyses are not sufficient to highlight them all. In particular, the distribution of the thyroidal hypertrophy was almost certainly due to the water quality, while the distribution of dental caries was probably related to genetic and dietary factors. ; Il presente studio si propone di presentare alcune mappe di salute relative ad una popolazione storica. Gli studi sullo stato di salute delle popolazioni del passato è incentrato solitamente sulle cause di morte. Il nostro obiettivo è di presentare alcune analisi descrittive sulla distribuzione di alcune patologie che non avevano effetto letale. Il lavoro è incentrato sul Friuli (Italia nord-orientale) nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento. La fonte utilizzata è costituita dalle liste di estrazione militare e consiste in circa 300.000 visite di leva svoltesi tra il 1866 e il 1909 (generazioni 1846-1890). Il nostro principale obiettivo è quello di valutare lo stato di salute della popolazione maschile di 20 anni e la sua associazione con fattori ambientali, socio-economici e genetici. In generale l'area montuosa settentrionale risultava essere la più avvantaggiata, mentre le aree più svantaggiate erano quelle della parte orientale e occidentale della provincia. Molti fattori hanno contribuito a determinare la distribuzione spaziale di alcune malattie specifiche del Friuli, mentre altre restano sconosciute perché le semplici analisi descrittive non sono sufficienti per evidenziarle tutte. In particolare la distribuzione dell'ipertrofismo tiroideo era dovuta quasi sicuramente alla qualità dell'acqua, mentre la distribuzione della carie dentaria era probabilmente legata a fattori di tipo genetico e alimentare.