Multicultural Origins of the Demographic Transition: The Impact of Cross-Cultural Proximity on Fertility Outcomes, 19th-Century Quebec

Lisa Dillon, Université de Montréal
Roxana Ivette Arana Ovalle, Université de Montréal

Historical demography of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fertility transition is a robust and dynamic field of research. Historical demographers now often seek to synthesize established causal paradigms with new perspectives drawn from history, evolutionary demography, historical geography and historical economics. In the case of Quebec and Canada, previous research on fertility behaviour has indicated the importance of ethno-religious identity, economic status and proximate grandparents in predicting fertility outcomes. Newly available longitudinal and complete-count population microdata for Quebec offers an opportunity to revisit this question, this time integrating multiple interpretive frameworks. This is an especially valuable opportunity as 19th-century Quebec represents a complex socio-cultural and economic milieu in which a French Catholic population famous for a high natural fertility regime resided alongside an anglophone population with ties to New England, known for its relatively early fertility transition, and Great Britain. The proposed paper will use a family reconstitution database of the Quebec population from 1760 to 1861 alongside complete-count census microdata for 1852, 1861, 1871 and 1881 to test whether mixed Catholic-Protestant unions or residence in predominantly Protestant counties predicted an early shift in fertility behaviour on the part of a minority of Quebec Catholic families.

Keywords: Historical Demography, Fertility, Neighbourhood/contextual effect analysis, Families, Unions and Households

See extended abstract.