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Abstract
Using the Princeton nuptiality index Im, we analyzed historical developments in the proportion of married women of reproductive age in Spain. We show the internal diversity in nuptiality patterns and offer an explanatory statistical model based on panel data analysis to identify the main variables influencing these changes over more than a century (1887–1991). We found that Spain has been the developed country with the greatest contrasts in its provincial nuptiality patterns (measured by Im), although this diversity has lessened over the course of time. We also found that some socioeconomic variables (the gross domestic product per capita and the percentage of population living in cities) do not have a linear relationship with female nuptiality but rather have a U shape or an inverted U shape. This may partly account for some of the controversy that has raged on this topic over the past few decades on an international level.
Notes
1. As we will see later, Reher (Citation1991), Lesthaeghe and López-Gay (Citation2013) and Miret-Gamundi (Citation2002) include these data in their articles, but do not go beyond 1930 in the two first cases, and 1940 in the second. Some regional research performed in Spain did use this index (e.g. Reher, Citation1990; Sánchez-Barricarte, Citation1997). Many studies on changes in marriage patterns in European countries (many of which were also linked with the Princeton European Fertility Project) also used the index Im to measure nuptiality (Coale, Anderson, & Härm, Citation1979; Engelen & Hillebrand, Citation1986; Lesthaeghe, Citation1978; Livi-Bacci, Citation1977; Van de Walle, Citation1974).
2. Hutterites are a Protestant sect (Anabaptists) founded in the sixteenth century. To escape persecution for their beliefs, they fled Western Europe to Russia in the eighteenth century, and then emigrated to the northern Mid-West of the USA in the nineteenth century. Hutterite women have high fertility because contraception and abortion are forbidden and mothers only breastfeed for a few months.
3. In 1927, the province of the Canary Islands was divided into two (Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas) and so the total number of provinces in Spain rose to 50, but we have decided to keep the Canary Islands as a single unit throughout the entire period of this study, that is, we worked with a list of 49 provinces.
4. As Borderías-Mondéjar indicates (Citation2011, p. 19), ‘it is widely known that the [Spanish] National Population Censuses and the Municipal Registers have under-represented female and child activity in historical societies […] None of this differs greatly from what has been observed in other countries’.
5. None the less, there is mixed evidence about the negative economic consequences of some of these events. For instance, some authors think that World War I brought substantial economic benefits to Spain (Sudriá, Citation1990).
6. The coefficient of variation is defined as the quotient: standard deviation/arithmetical mean. It is normally expressed as a percentage.
7. The different periods reflect the mean values observed.
8. In the period 1900–1940, for every 100 men aged 15–49 years on the census in the province of Madrid, there were 110 women.
9. There were greater restrictions on marriage in areas where mayorazgo prevailed, as it meant that the family property went to a single heir (generally the oldest son). Subsequent children were in practice disinherited and found it hard to marry; many joined the army or the Church.
10. Data are available from these Spanish censuses: 1887, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1981 and 1991.
11. Both tests are significant at 1%.
12. The variance inflation factor (VIF) quantifies the severity of multicollinearity. It provides an index that measures how much the variance (the square of the estimate's standard deviation) of an estimated regression coefficient is increased because of collinearity. A rule of thumb is that if VIF > 10 then multicollinearity is high (Kutner, Nachtsheim, & Neter, Citation2004, p. 408; Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, Citation1995).
13. In a historical study on marriage patterns in the province of Navarra from 1786 to 1991, Sánchez-Barricarte (Citation1997) found major differences concerning both the age of access to marriage and the marriage rate itself. Areas in the rich agricultural regions of the south of the province had much higher marriage rates than those in the mountainous north.