{"title":"Land Inequality and Demographic Outcomes: The Relationship between Access to Land and the Demographic System in 19th-century Rural Tuscany","authors":"M. Manfredini , A. Fornasin , M. Breschi","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2025.101668","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In pre-industrial rural Italy, the disparities among smallholders, sharecroppers, and day laborers were starkly defined by their unequal access to land, which significantly influenced their living standards, family structures, and socioeconomic conditions. This paper uses nominative data from 1819 to 1859 to first explore how the different peasant categories adjusted their demographic behaviors according to their tie to the land, and then how they were possibly modified when short-term stressors, such as price increase and/or epidemics, altered the existing equilibrium.</div><div>The results reveal that the groups with access to land where less vulnerable and less susceptible to economic crises compared to day laborers, who relied entirely on the market for essential food supplies. During periods of high prices, day laborers experienced a rapid decline in their economic situation, leading to increased mortality, migration, and postponement of marriages. However, access to land was also associated with a demographic pattern aimed at both controlling household consumption and maximizing the male labor force. This included strict control over marriages, increased fertility, and selective mobility, all of which could intensify during crises and periods of rising prices.</div><div>These findings underscore the inadequacy of the simplistic classification of landed versus landless groups, emphasizing the necessity for a more sophisticated understanding of households based on their relationship and connections with the land.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101668"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Explorations in Economic History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498325000154","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In pre-industrial rural Italy, the disparities among smallholders, sharecroppers, and day laborers were starkly defined by their unequal access to land, which significantly influenced their living standards, family structures, and socioeconomic conditions. This paper uses nominative data from 1819 to 1859 to first explore how the different peasant categories adjusted their demographic behaviors according to their tie to the land, and then how they were possibly modified when short-term stressors, such as price increase and/or epidemics, altered the existing equilibrium.
The results reveal that the groups with access to land where less vulnerable and less susceptible to economic crises compared to day laborers, who relied entirely on the market for essential food supplies. During periods of high prices, day laborers experienced a rapid decline in their economic situation, leading to increased mortality, migration, and postponement of marriages. However, access to land was also associated with a demographic pattern aimed at both controlling household consumption and maximizing the male labor force. This included strict control over marriages, increased fertility, and selective mobility, all of which could intensify during crises and periods of rising prices.
These findings underscore the inadequacy of the simplistic classification of landed versus landless groups, emphasizing the necessity for a more sophisticated understanding of households based on their relationship and connections with the land.
期刊介绍:
Explorations in Economic History provides broad coverage of the application of economic analysis to historical episodes. The journal has a tradition of innovative applications of theory and quantitative techniques, and it explores all aspects of economic change, all historical periods, all geographical locations, and all political and social systems. The journal includes papers by economists, economic historians, demographers, geographers, and sociologists. Explorations in Economic History is the only journal where you will find "Essays in Exploration." This unique department alerts economic historians to the potential in a new area of research, surveying the recent literature and then identifying the most promising issues to pursue.