1 See Richard, Wall, ‘Introduction’ in Richard, Wall (ed.), Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–65, esp. 6–13.Google Scholar

2 The starting-point for this approach really dates from the appearance of Peter Laslett and Richard, Wall (eds), Household and family in past time, (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar. See also Hammel, Eugene and Peter, Laslett, ‘Comparing household structure over time and between cultures’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 16, 73–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 One of the most recent products of this trend can be seen in Richard Wall, Family forms, which contains a number of innovative articles.

4 For a brief discussion of the criticisms of Laslett's classification system, see Willigin, J. D. and Lynch, K. A., Sources and methods of historical demography (New York, 1982) 183–9.Google Scholar

5 Lutz, Berkner, ‘Household arithmetic; A note’, Journal of Family History 2 (1972), 159–63.Google Scholar

6 See Wall, , ‘Introduction’, op. cit. 3–4.Google Scholar

7 For an example of this type of work, see Etienne van de, Walle, ‘Household dynamics in a Belgian village, 1847–1866’, Journalof Family History 1, (1976), 80–94?CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Segalen, M., ‘The family cycle and household structure: five generations in a French village’, Journal of Family History (1977), 223–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richard, Sieder and Michael, Mitterauser, ‘The reconstruction of the family life course: theoretical problems and empirical results’, in Wall, Family forms, 309–45Google Scholar; Luc Danhieux, ‘The evolving household: the case of Lampernisse, West Flanders’, in Wall, ibid. 409–21; Antoinette, Fauve-Chamoux, ‘Les structures familiales au royaume des families-souches: Esparros’, Annales, E.S.C. (1984) 513–28.Google Scholar

8 Cuenca's population at different dates is a fitting testimony to its own economic fortunes. These figures include institutional populations (convents, hospitals, prisons, etc.).

1561 14,644*

1591 13,280*

1644 5,600*

1693 6,451

1724 6,740

1752 7,468*

1787 7,902

1800 7,857

1821 6,977

1844 5,861

1860 7,351

* Estimated population based on household heads (x 4).

9 Centuries-long decadence was, in fact, quite frequent in Castilian towns that in the sixteenth century had been the heart of the Spanish urban system but which after the seventeenth-century crisis became one of the least-urbanised parts of the kingdom. See Jan De, Vries, European Urbanization 1800–1800, (London, 1984)Google Scholar. A sample of six Castilian towns (Avila, Burgos, Segovia, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo) shows the following yearly growth rates in different periods: 1591–1787, –0.36; 1591–1860, –0.16; 1787–1860Google Scholar, 0.36. See Reher, David S., ‘Intra-urban mobility in a small Castilian town in the nineteenth century’, Actes du collogue sur les petites villes (in the press).Google Scholar

10 This excludes day-labourers who might work both in the industrial and the agricultural sectors.

11 Demographic data for Cuenca is taken from the results of a family reconstitution project as well as from census type data.

12 This same dynamic has recently been pointed out for England by Goldstone, J. A., ‘The demographic revolution in England: a re-examination’, Population Studies 40, 1 (1986), 5–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

13 Between 1842 and 1848, 64 per cent of those born survived until their fifth birthday.

14 Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux estimates that mean household size in 1802 in the city of Rheims was 3.88: ‘The importance of women in an urban environment: the example of the Rheims household at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution’ in Wall, , Family forms, 475–92, esp. 479–80.Google Scholar

15 Richard Wall finds slightly higher levels of child mobility in Colyton. See ‘The age at leaving home’, Journal of Family History 3, 2 (1978), 181–202, esp. 196. In fact our cross-sectional examination would tend to mechanically increase proportions of children not living at home unless, of course, out-migration of children equalled or surpassed in-migration of the children of other families as well as the number of children ‘left behind’ by emigrant families.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 This is a considerably younger age distribution than that found in Austrian towns for approximately the same period. See Schmidtbauer, P., ‘The changing household: Austrian household structure from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century’, in Wall, Family forms, 347–407.Google Scholar

17 See Peter, Czap, ‘“A large family: the peasant's greatest wealth”: serf households in Mishino, Russia, 1814–1858’, in Wall, Family forms, 65–104; Sieder, Reinhard and Michael Mitterauer, ‘The reconstruction of the family life course’; A. Fauve-Chamoux, ‘Les structures familiales’.Google Scholar

18 See Anderson, Michael, Family structure in nineteenth-century Lancashire, (Cambridge, 1971) 141.Google Scholar

19 See Pitt-Rivers, J. A., The people of the Sierra (Chicago, 1961) especially chapter 7Google Scholar; David, Kertzer, Family life in Central Italy, 1800–1910; sharecropping, wage labor, and coresidence (New Brunswick, 1984)Google Scholar; Lisón-Tolosana, Carmelo, Belmonte de los Caballeros (Princeton, 1966), 151–7 (1983 paperback edition).Google Scholar

20 All of the ideographs are drawn according to the following structural guidelines:

– Triangles represent males; circles, females.

– Bonds of direct kinship are shown by unbroken lines; between husband and wife the line is underneath the figures and among brothers it is above the figures.

– Indirect as well as suspected bonds of kinship are shown by broken lines. Indirect lines are also used to denote bonds of kinship which will eventually exist within a household, but which do not at a given moment.

– Members of the household who are not members of the family are shown in the upper right hand corner of the rectangle.

– A rectangle is used to indicate a household.

– The head of the household is indicated by the presence of a darkened triangle or circle.

– When there is movement of individuals between two households of the same figure, this movement is indicated by a directional line. The same holds true when the same household changes physical location.

– Household development is pictured yearly and thus one can normally visualise the same household in, say, five successive years. In order to convey more clearly the great mobility of kin, at any given moment all of the potential members of a household are portrayed. Those actually present are represented by unbroken lines, and the ones who will be present or have been present before are shown by broken lines.

– Every individual in an ideograph receives a number. In the corresponding note to the figure, personal data on the indicated individual is supplied.

21 Here we are following the ideas of John, Hajnal, 1982, ‘Two kinds of preindustrial household formation systems’, Population and Development Review, 8, 3Google Scholar, tables 7 and 8. A shortened version of this article also appears in Wall, , Family forms, 65–104.Google Scholar

22 Richard, Smith, 1981, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England over three centuries’, Population and Development Review 7, 4, 595–622, especially 618.Google Scholar

23 Archive Municipal de Cuenca, Relaciones de Utilidades, legajos 1199, 1200 (1820) and 1193, 1197 (for 1841). See also Trotiño, Vinuesa, Miguel, Angel, Cuenca: Evolución y crisis de una vieja ciudad castellana (Madrid, 1984), esp. 170–81, 207–21.Google Scholar

24 See Pitt-Rivers, The People chapter 1.

25 See Hajnal, , ‘Two kinds’, 69, household formation rule 2; Wall, ‘Introduction’, op. cit. 16Google Scholar; Laslett, , ‘Family and household as work group and kin group’, in Wall, Family forms, 513–63, esp. 525–31.Google Scholar

26 The ideographs used in this and other examples portray a good number of behaviour patterns. However, in the interests of claríty our comments will be limited to those aspects strictly pertinent to our discussion.

27 See Laslett, , ‘Family and household’, 532.Google Scholar

28 Two of the districts have but one parish, another has four and the final one has six. The maximum distance between any two households is 150 metres.

29 See Caldwell, John C, ‘The wealth flows theory of fertility decline’, in Höhn, C. and Mackensen, R. (eds), Determinants of Fertility Trends: Theories Re-examined (Liège, 1981) 171–88.Google Scholar

30 See Caldwell, , especially 177–79.Google Scholar

31 The data we have register those present, those leaving and those entering the household in any given year between 1843 and 1847. The following procedure was used to derive the total person-years at risk (the denominator of the I_fc equation). Since movement was only possible in four years (1844–1847) (in 1843 everyone was present by definition), all those person-years present from 1843 to 1847 were reduced by 20 per cent. Furthermore we have supposed that all entries or exits from the household between 1844 and 1847 were, in fact, six month stays in that household (on the average). Thus the sum of entries and exits divided by 2 was added to the years present multiplied by 0.8 in order to represent the total person-years at risk.

32 The concept of children-years measures the time during which a particular population is at risk of experiencing a particular event.

33 See Reher, David S., ‘Mobility and migration in pre-industrial areas: the case of nineteenth-century Cuenca’, paper given at the IUSSP Seminar on Urbanisation and Population Dynamics in History, Tokyo, 1986.Google Scholar

34 Unfortunately the reduced size of the sample advises against deriving important conclusions from the data on other co-resident kin.

35 Lutz, Berkner, ‘The stem family and the development cycle of the peasant household’, American Historical Review, 77, 2 (1972) 398–418; esp. 406.Google Scholar

36 The proportions of complex households are slightly higher in Table 6 than in Table 1 (which is based only on the 1844 listing) owing to the fact that only families present for the entire period are considered. This tends to exclude both smaller and more mobile families as well as single widows and widowers, thus increasing relative complexity.

37 In the early nineteenth century in Cuenca the mean age at first marriage for women was 24.3 years and the mean age at last childbirth was 38.9 years.

38 This is done by multiplying the different yearly rates by the number of years in each age group and adding the products, much as a total fertility rate is calculated. Here the yearly rates over the four-year period are assumed constant over the five- or ten-year age groups. This of course implies turning period into cohort analysis, a popular venial (?) sin among historical demographers. Mea culpa.

39 This estimate is based on the assumptions that practically all households undergo several structural changes (Table 7) and that the proportions of complex households shown in Table 6 (15.9) are indicative of life-cycle expectations (0.159 x 40 = 6.36).

40 See Smith, Richard M., ‘Some issues concerning families and their property in rural England 1250–1800’, in Smith, R. M., ed., Land, kinship and life cycle (Cambridge 1984), 1–73.Google Scholar

41 See Pitt-Rivers, The people chp. 7.

42 See Hansen, Edward C., Rural Catalonia under the Franco regime (Cambridge, 1977) 44–7, 99Google Scholar; Sieder, and Mitterauer, , The family cycle 341–44.Google Scholar

43 See Laslett, , ‘Family and household’, 546.Google Scholar

44 Richard, Wall, ‘Work, welfare and the family: an illustration of the adaptive family economy’, in Bonfield, Smith and Wrightson, eds., The world we have gained (Blackwell 1986) 261–94.Google Scholar

45 Jean Robin has found appreciable levels in the Essex village of Elmdon for the mid-nineteenth century. However the 22–30 per cent levels of in- and out-migration over a ten-year period would not seem comparable to the 14–15 per cent per year in Cuenca. See Jean, Robin, Elmdon: continuity and change in a northwest Essex village, 1861–1964 (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar, tables 53 and 54. Similar levels of movement have been found in industrial communities of Sweden. See Akerman, S. and Norberg, A., ‘Employmei opportunities, family building and internal migration in the late nineteenth century. Some Swedish Case Studies’ in Coale, Ansley J. ed., Economic factors in population growth (New York, 1976), 367–85.Google Scholar

46 See David S. Reher, ‘Mobility and migration’.