Family formation and social mobility

1
Family formation and social mobility

• Life courses in Amsterdam
• 1850-1940

2
Sources

• Census general figures
• Historische steekproef Nederland/Historical
  Sample of Netherlands
• Birth certificates 1860-1922
• Population register family composition and
  characteristics
• Marriage certificates
• Death certificates
• More dossiers of the social security, tax
  registers

3
Life courses

• Choices in life
• Transitions movements, marriage, leaving home,
  choice of profession
• Transitions have a timing
• Relate transitions to family characteristics and
  position of individual in family.

4
Research questions

• What explains changes in life courses and social
  mobility?
• Focus on family circumstances and individual
  transitions
• Possible relations
• Does family size influence chances of social
  mobility?
• Does age of marriage influence chances social
  mobility?
• Decline in death rate in family? birth
  control

5
Demographic transition

• Background
• Declining death rates
• Conscious birth control
• Lowering of age of marriage
• Increase in number of people married

6
Causes and consequences

• Better life conditions (hygiene, water supply,
  medicine)
• Higher wages
• New economic opportunities
• Women withdraw from labour market, spent more
  time on the family
• Children as investment goods education makes
  sense

7
GIS

• Changes of address spatial mobility in time
• New families spread or concentration?
• Characterize quarters in the town social
  categories, population, births, deaths, migrants
• New quarters vs old quarters
• Location of work and family

8
Population Amsterdam 1815-1940
9
Vital statistics
10
Marriage Fertility