High Fertility, High Emigration, Low Nuptiality: Adjustment Processes in Scotland's Demographic Experience, 1861–1914, Part II

Abstract

In Part I of this paper (published in the previous issue) we outlined the major contrasts in demographic experience between almost all areas of Scotland and most of England during the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We also demonstrated the existence of significant regional differences within Scotland. In Part II, interpretations are offered for these various contrasts in experience. Four Scottish regional case studies are examined, each of which shows a different combination of nuptiality, marital fertility and out-migration. In studying each case, stress is laid on the ways in which the prevailing demographic regime, if it is examined as an interrelated whole, can be seen as involving highly appropriate adjustments to the ecological, economic, and institutional contexts of the region. In this approach, ‘innovation’ aspects of the fertility decline are therefore played down; instead, for some parts of the country in particular, continued very high fertility among those who married is seen as a highly rational response to particular local social and economic situations which also encouraged very low nuptiality, and moderate or high levels of out-migration. The much lower nuptiality in Scotland compared to England is explained in part by reference to constraints on access to housing and the very limited availability of any support from the Poor Law, and in part through limited economic opportunities in a more slowly growing economy.