Levels of Demographic Randomness Evidence from the Wrigley and Schofield Parish Series
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper presents a revised version of arguments published Wachter (1992), "Variabilité aleatoire des phénomènes démographiques : enseignements des séries paroissiales de Wrigley et Schofield" which appeared in Modèles de la démographie historique, edited by Alain Blum, No"el Bonneuil, and Didier Blanchet, Congrès et Coll oques 11, Institut National d’Études Démographiques, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Ronald Lee and his successors have given a very detailed account of short-term fluctuations in demographic rates in pre-industrial settings. Much of this short-term variability, however, involves variability in the timing of deaths, marriages, and births, and does not cumulate into variability in overall medium-term growth rates from generation to generation. What are the levels of randomness observable in generational growth rates? By how much do they exceed the lower bounds on intrinsic demographic randomness predictable from branching process theory? Are there any discernible correlations or shared variances among different locales within a country, or can randomness at the national level be considered to be composed of independent local contributions ? Annual counts of baptisms, marriages and burials summed over 20-year intervals from 1600 to 1820 in 191 of the 404 English parishes of the Wrigley-Schofield collection are used to offer answers to these questions.
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