Developments in household patterns in three towns in Navarre, Spain, 1786–1986

Abstract

Contrary to what has been observed in other regions of Spain, the households of Sangüesa, Yesa, and Lesaca have undergone a set of transformation in their composition and structure in the last 200 years. These changes are closely linked to the economic changes that have taken place in Navarre during this period. The chief characteristic of the developments over the past two centuries has been the rise of the household with a simply structure (married couples with or without children), to which category most households now belong. A further noteworthy features is the fact that domestic servants have now almost completely disappeared.

Keywords:

• Family history
• Navarre, Spain
• Household

Notes

1 The main source for studying the family and the household has generally been the lists of inhabitants in the censuses of 1786, 1900, 1930, and 1960, and the register of residents in 1986. The 1786 census, also known as the Floridablanca census, was carefully compiled. All the population centers of in existence were included in it, down to farmsteads and manor houses. Measures were taken to include vagrants, migrants, and prisoners. Age groups can be established demographically and the structure and make-up of families can be studied because of the way the population is grouped into households and the head of the family is indicated. It is useful in this particular case to double-check the printed table: whether there are any errors or omissions in the declaration of age, profession, etc. In the case of Sangüesa, the name lists in the Floridablanca census were highly authentic, but the census is incomplete since sheets containing information on a small district of the town are missing. This district, however, only contained a small percentage of the total population. The name lists in the censuses of 1900, 1930, and 1960 contain information on all households. The same is true of the 1986 register of residents. Although this register is administered differently from a census, it also contains the necessary information for studying households. In both censuses and registers, the head of the household is specified, along with the relationship of the other members of the household to him or her. With the information gathered on these towns, a database was built up containing over 9000 entries recording the following data: head of family (sex, age, marital status, trade, birthplace), spouse (age, birthplace), children (age, sex, marital status), other relatives living in the house (relationship, age, sex, marital status), domestic servants (age, sex, marital status), and people living in the house unrelated to the head.

2 In the case of the 1960 census for Sangüesa, we should add that figures for 240 temporary residents, many of whom were married, lived alone, and were engaged in building a paper factory, were not taken into account. Although some of these people remained in Sangüesa and brought their families to live with them, the majority left when the work was completed. If we had included these laborers in the classification used, we would have obtained a high proportion of single households, which would not have reflected accurately the dominant household pattern in Sangüesa at that time.

3 The mean age at marriage obtained using this method was given the name Singulate Mean Age at Marriage by Hajnal, and is generally known by the acronym SMAM in specialist literature (Hajnal, 1953).

4 The American demographer Coale (1965, 1969) devised a set of indices for the European Fertility Project, which have continued to be used in most historical studies on fertility. These indices are widely known as the Princeton Indices given that Professor Coale developed them at Princeton University. The Index of Marital Fertility (I _g ) is the proportion of the actual number of births to married women in relation to the number of births these same women would have had if they had had the same level of specific fertility as the married Hutterite women, F _i . Thus: whereby B _L (legitimate births) is the annual number of legitimate births and m _i (married) is the number of married women in each interval of 5-year age groups.

4 The Nuptiality Index I _m indicates the number of children that married women in a certain population would have in relation to the number of children all women in that population (married and nonmarried) would have if they had the same level of fertility as the Hutterite women. This is an index that is aggregated and weighed against fertility with greater value given to married women of the usual child-bearing ages (under 30) as compared to less prolific ages (over 30). The values of I _m are framed in the interval of zero (no married women) to one (all married women between ages 15 and 49). The manner of calculating this index is the following: whereby m _i (married) is the number of married women in each interval of 5-year groups, F _i (Fertility) indicates the specific fertility rate for each age category of married Hutterite women, and w _i (women) is the total number of women in each interval of 5-year groups between 15 and 49. This Index indicates to what extent nuptiality contributes to the achievement of the highest possible potential fertility within a given population.

4 As Coale and Watkins (1986, pp. 156–162) has pointed out, the four Princeton Indices (I _f , I _g , I _m , I _h ) are influenced by the age structure of the female population. This becomes a problem when trying to compare population indices with other age distributions. Variations of these indices have been developed that incorporate direct standardization for the age distribution. The modified versions are defined in the following manner: where f _i is the fertility rate for married women in each interval of 5 years in a specific population, F _i indicates the specific fertility rate per age group of married Hutterite women, and M _i is the proportion of married women in each age interval in the reproductive period of a standard population which, in our case, is that of the number of married women indicated in the 1930 Census. In the same way:

5 We should not forget that, in Lesaca, the marital fertility rates were higher (Table 1) and the mortality rates lower (Sánchez-Barricarte, 1998), which resulted in a higher number of surviving children.

6 In fact, the first 3rd of the 20th century saw a major decline in marital fertility (Sánchez-Barricarte, 1998).