The fertility transition which has taken place at various times and speeds across European countries since the nineteenth century is an important element in the economic and social history of those countries. In Ireland, the transition was notoriously late and, until recent decades, slow. In Discussion Paper No. 1109, Research Fellow Cormac Ó Gráda and Niall Duffy build datasets for three very different Irish regions (two rural, one urban) from the manuscript forms of the 1911 census in order to investigate family limitation strategies. The analysis is limited to women who married before the age of 35, and who were married for less than 10 years in 1911. Regression analysis is applied to each dataset, and the effects of marriage duration, child mortality, occupation, religion, and the bride's age at marriage assessed. The outcome is consistent with family limitation early in marriage, that is, `spacing' in two of the three areas.

The final section of the paper offers an analysis of the so-called `replacement' problem. This relates to the connection between the number of children born and child mortality. On the one hand, parents with some final number of children in mind might plausibly be expected to replace a dead child. On the other hand, there is reverse `Malthusian' causation: child mortality might be higher where there are several children in close succession. The estimation technique used to deal with this simultaneity problem also produces an outcome that is consistent with `spacing'.

Fertility Control Early in Marriage in Ireland a Century Ago
Cormac Ó Gráda and Niall Duffy

Discussion Paper No. 1109, January 1995 (HR)