The Influence of Child Morality on Fertility in European Populations in the Past: Results from Individual Data

The limited number of studies which provide evidence based on individual data on the influence of child mortality on fertility in European populations in the past and the small number of cases involved in many of the studies make firm conclusions impossible. The difficulties are aggravated by the fact that with rare exception these studies did not direct their analysis to examining this relationship beyond presenting evidence of the "physiological" effect of infant deaths in the birth interval. Thus much of the evidence reviewed in this paper had to be based on a re-analysis of data presented in the appendices of several of these studies. Since these data were not presented in an ideal format for this purpose, several otherwise unnecessary constraints were imposed on resulting tabulations. Additional limitations arose from the fact that only a very few studies covered periods during which marital fertility began its secular decline. Finally the interpretation of results was impeded by the difficulty of separating the impact of the different effects infant mortality would exert on fertility and the impact of other mediating factors.