Socioeconomic Change, Peasant Household Structure and Demographic Behavior in a French Department

In: Journal of family history: studies in family, kinship and demography, Volume 17, Issue 2, p. 161-181

Abstract

The article focuses on the relationship between social and economic structure and household structure, on the one hand, and household structure and demographic behavior on the other. The analysis provides some insight into the factors that determined household structure and demographic behavior in the two nineteenth-century villages in the Loire district in France-one village agricultural and the other with a protoindustrial sector. Labor needs imposed on the household by the economy helped to determine the structure of that household, and, especially by way of nuptiality, such considerations could also affect reproduction. Nevertheless, it would be pressing the evidence much too far to suggest that only household structure determined demographic behavior.