Data

The core of this analysis uses reconstituted records of baptisms, marriages, and burials from seven contiguous parishes of central Slavonia, in the region of Cernik-Nova Gradiska (see Map ’’.’).

The reconstitutions are based on 23,307 marriages ’7’7-1864, ’’2,18’ baptisms ’7’4-1898, and 94,077 burials ’7’7-’898.’⁵ The seven parishes enter and leave the dataset at different times, but often only because of the division of large parishes into smaller ones. Data availability ceases for different kinds of records at somewhat different times in different parishes. These characteristics pose problems of potential compositional effects for the analysis. The parish data are of good quality, especially after ’760. Table ’’.’ shows the pattern of data availability over time. Other analyses of these and more general demographic data from the region suggest that the parishes were broadly similar.

Table 11.1 Data availability by parish and date

In this analysis we use the subset of data for mothers with extant first marriage records: 13,202 marriages, 56,546 baptisms in those marriages, 8,737 baptisms of the mothers, and 7,119 burials of mothers. The 56,546 birthings in these 13,202 reproductive histories form the units of observation in the analysis.

Within sixty days of these births 417 mothers died, yielding a crude ‘rate’ of MM of 0.0074; this is a gross rate, not taking into account estimates of background mortality (BM) unrelated to pregnancy.¹⁶ The age of a woman at each birth was reckoned from the calendrical dates of that birth and her marriage and her age at marriage. Age at marriage was reckoned from the dates of wife's baptism and marriage where available, else calculated from the dates of marriage and death and reported age at death, if known. For the remaining women, age at marriage was imputed from the mean age of women of known age.

5.