Conclusion
By applying the distributed lag model we have been able to explore the relationship between fluctuations in wheat prices and mortality, with reference to Tuscany in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Some of the results partly reflect what wasalready known, but others raise new questions regarding the reaction mechanisms of a population to an agrarian crisis.
In particular, the effects on mortality of fluctuations in wheat prices are positive and almost always concentrated in lag 0. This model is representative of both the urban and rural populations, when the latter is considered as a whole. Town and countryside present more similarities than differences, as with regard to the various age groups. The adults and the elderly largely paid the consequences of an agrarian crisis. Infants—the weakest age group by far, and the one subject to highest overall mortality rates—were largely indifferent to wheat price oscillations. Slightly older children seem to have felt the consequences after a short delay.
The analysis of the forty-three rural regions permitted a specification of what some of the important links are in the complex relationship between economy and demography.
The evidence provided by travellers in the 1800s has provided a traditional picture of a wealthy country with a high standard of living—the ‘Tuscany of the river'—as opposed to the desolate view of miserable areas—the Maremma marshes—or to the poor ones as the Senese countryside. At times, the bucolic images associated to the wealthiest part of the Grand Duchy have been matched to the difficult life conditions in the countryside (Giorgetti 1974), but its economic supremacy was never in doubt, nor was the fact that the inhabitants of the ‘Tuscany of the river' region lived, on average, better than the others.
Some of the results emerging from our research appear almost in contrast with the images described—their very wealth itself might have been one of the weak points of the rich territories.
Next to the well-off population also lived the poor, or at least the most fragile, in a higher proportion than elsewhere. We have noticed how under particular conditions, as during the times of price increase, it is not the general degree of wealth that warrants a good standard of living but the social composition of the population.We are dealing, as we have already mentioned, with results that require some further verification, and therefore they must be treated with a certain caution. One initial step, albeit limited to the population of one village, would appear to reinforce what has already been stated.
We have a database at our disposal relating to the village of Casalguidi, located in the heart of the mixed agriculture region, which permits us to follow the life stories of individuals and families. Therefore, it is possible to study ‘close up' the relationship between economic variables and mortality over a slightly longer period (1819—59) than the one covered in this chapter.
In some preliminary analyses, the effects of the economic crises on the mortality rates among the population of Casalguidi have been investigated, with particular reference to infants and children (Breschi, Derosas, and Manfredini 1999, 2000; Breschi et al. 1999). The analysis of these life stories allows us to keep multiple ‘variables' at hand: those relating to the individual (sex, age, etc.), household (structure, profession of the head of the household, etc.), and context (the presence of epidemics, wars, etc.). The results observed in the microcosm of Casalguidi point,
nevertheless, in the same direction as those encountered in agrarian regions where mixed agriculture was prevalent. As in the whole region, the infants of Casalguidi were completely indifferent to price oscillations. Their death rates were, if anything, more sensitive to the changing of the seasons, with the added risks brought about by the summer and winter months. Another factor inducing greater mortality was modest socio-economic position of the parents, and, in particular, the age at which the child was weaned.
At an individual level too, the death rate among children (younger than ten years old) does not seem to be connected to price oscillations, once factors which clearly play a far more direct role (such as, for example, the economic condition and viability of the parents) have been taken into account.Once more, it is the parents, generally without any difference, who pay the highest price in the same year of a price increase. However, the added risk does not affect all adults but is mainly concentrated among wage earners, farmers, and small artisans. Among the elderly, the economic crisis affected only those who lived alone or in a nuclear family.’5 If the investigation of these forty-three agrarian regions at the macro-level has opened up broad questions, the exploration at a micro-level (of a community, its families, and individuals) has provided some answers. It is, therefore, possible that this method might lead us to achieve greater clarity as to the reasons why the mountainous and marsh regions appear more impervious to economic stress, or why the countryside, ‘the land without the harmony of trees', should instead react in such a complex and rich fashion.