Human Fertility in Russia Since the Nineteenth Century 9781400867783

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HUMAN FERTILITY IN RUSSIA SINCE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

This book is the fifth in a series on the decline of fertility in Europe. A publication of the Office of Population Research Princeton University.

Human Fertility in Russia since the Nineteenth Century AN SLEY J. COALE BARBARA A. ANDERSON ERNA HARM

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1979 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by the Office of Population Research This book has been composed in Linotype Times Roman Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

Contents LIST OF TABLES

VII

LIST OF FIGURES

XI

LIST OF MAPS

XIX

PREFACE

XXI

CHAPTER 1:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2:

THE EVOLUTION OF MARITAL FERTILITY IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA

15

MARITAL FERTILITY IN CENTRAL ASIA AND THE TRANSCAUCASUS

85

CHAPTER 3: CHAPTER 4:

CHAPTER 5:

CHAPTER 6:

3

VARIATIONS IN IM-. THE PROPORTIONS MARRIED AMONG POTENTIALLY FERTILE WOMEN IN THE UNION REPUBLICS, 1897 ΤΟ 1970

122

VARIATIONS IN NUPTIALITY AMONG THE PROVINCES OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA IN 1897

147

SUMMARY OF FERTILITY CHANGE IN RUSSIA: THE MARCH OF THE ELLIPSES

179

APPENDIX A: ADJUSTMENTS AND ESTIMATES USED IN CALCULATING THE BASIC FERTILITY INDEXES

20 7

APPENDIX B: NOTES ON THE AGE DISTRIBUTION OF NATIONALITIES IN 1959 AND 1970

247

APPENDIX C: NOTES ON THE FERTILITY OF THE NONMARRIED POPULATION

251

APPENDIX D: DATA SOURCES FOR FERTILITY INDEXES

257

NOTES

261

REFERENCES

273

INDEX

279

List of Tables CHAPTER 2 Table 2.1 Table 2.2

Table 2.3

Table 2.4

Table 2.5

Table 2.6

Table 2.7

Table 2.8 Table 2.9 Table 2.10

Table 2.11

Table 2.12

Table 2.13

Index of Marital Fertility (Ig) in European Rus­ sia, for Single Calendar Years, 1881-1970 Indexes of Fertility in 1897 for the Rural, Urban, and Total Populations of the Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia, Pre-Revolutionary Boundaries Indexes of Fertility in 1926 for the Rural, Ur­ ban, and Total Populations of the Provinces of European Russia, Pre-Revolutionary Boundaries Indexes of Fertility in 1926 for the Rural, Ur­ ban, and Total Populations of the Provinces of European Russia, Boundaries of 1959 Indexes of Fertility in 1940 for the Total Popu­ lations of the Provinces of European Russia, Boundaries of 1959 Indexes of Fertility in 1959 for the Rural, Ur­ ban, and Total Populations of the Provinces of European Russia, Boundaries of 1959 Indexes of Fertility in 1970 for the Rural, Ur­ ban, and Total Populations of the Provinces of European Russia, Boundaries of 1959 Variables in Multiple Regression Analysis Summary of Multiple Regressions (Variables Listed in Table 2.8) Average Value of the Infant Mortality Rate (Deaths Under One per 1,000 Live Births) in the 50 Provinces of European Russia, the 28 Provinces Containing More than Two Percent Western Nationalities, and the Other 22 Correlations of I1 with Infant Mortality Rate and Proportion Western, 47 Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia (Protestant Baltic Provinces Omit­ ted) Correlation of Infant Mortality Rate and Propor­ tion of Western Nationality in the Population, Provinces of Pre-Revolutionary European Rus­ sia Results of Multiple Correlation of Rural Ig and Selected Independent Variables With and With­ out Proportion Western (1926) and Proportion Eastern (1959)

16

20

22

24

28

30

34 64 65

67

74

74

83 Evii ]

LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER 3 Table 3.1

Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4

Table 3.5

Table 3.6

Indexes of Fertility, for the Rural, Urban, and Total Population of the Union Republics of the Soviet Union, 1897, 1926, 1959, and 1970 Selected Characteristics of Non-European Re­ publics of the Soviet Union, 1970 Natural Fertility (n(a)) and Typical Departure from Natural Fertility (ν (a)) Median Values of m, the Index of the Degree of Departure from Natural Fertility, in the Re­ publics of the USSR, 1959 and 1970 Estimates of I, for the Titular Nationality, and the European Population, in the Non-European Republics of the Soviet Union, 1970 Proportion Married (/„) and Marital Fertility (/„), Three Asian Populations

86 94 95

98

103 110

CHAPTER 4 Table 4.1 Table 4.2

Table 4.3

Index of Proportion Married (Im) in the Union Republics of the Soviet Union, 1897 to 1970 Singulate Mean Age at First Marriage, and Pro­ portion Ever-Married at Age 50 Among Females in the Rural Population of the Union Republics, Late 19th Century, and 1965-1970 Singulate Mean Age at First Marriage, and Pro­ portion Ever-Married at Age 50 Among Females in Various West European, East European, and Non-European Populations

124

136

137

CHAPTER 5 Table 5.1

Table 5.2

Table 5.3 t viii ]

The Four Most Important Independent Vari­ ables (with the Highest Partial Correlations) in the Multivariate Analysis of the Singulate Mean Age at Marriage, 50 Provinces of European Russia, and 50 Provinces Less Four Baltic Prov­ inces, 1897 Regression Coefficients and R2 Values for SMAM (Male and Female) and Im, Urban and Rural, 50 Provinces of European Russia, 1897 Intercorrelations Among Independent Variables Used to Explain SMAM and Im in 1897

167

168 169

LIST OF TABLES APPENDIX A

Table A.l Reapportionment of Persons from Single to Mar­ ried in the Rural Population of Certain Uezds and Provinces, and Effect on Proportion Mar­ ried, Census of Russia, 1897 Table A.2 Approximate Completeness of Birth Registra­ tion, 1954-58 and 1965-69, Republics of the Soviet Union

222

239

APPENDIX C

Table C.l Indexes in 1897 for the Rural, Populations of the Provinces of Pre-Revolutionary Boundaries Table C.2 Indexes in 1926 for the Rural, Populations of the Provinces of Pre-Revolutionary Boundaries

Urban, and Total European Russia, 252 Urban, and Total European Russia, 254

List of Figures CHAPTER 1 Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3

Figure 1.4

Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ie), and Overall Fertility (/,), Various European Populations: 1900 Proportion Married ( I m ) , Marital Fertility ( I s ) , and Overall Fertility (It), Various European Populations: 1930 Proportion Married ( I m ) , Marital Fertility ( I 1 ) , and Overall Fertility (I,), Various European Populations: 1960 Proportion Married (/,„), Marital Fertility ( I 1 ) , and Overall Fertility (Ir), Various European Populations: 1970

CHAPTER 2 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2

Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4

Figure 2.5

Figure 2.6

Figure 2.7

Annual Values of Marital Fertility ( I 1 ) , Euro­ pean Russia: 1881-1970 Marital Fertility (Ig) of Total Population, Dis­ tribution of Provinces of European Russia by Level: 1897-1970 Marital Fertility (/,,) of Rural Population, Dis­ tribution of Provinces of European Russia by Level: 1897-1970 Marital Fertility ( I g ) of Urban Population, Distribution of Provinces of European Rus­ sia by Level: 1897-1970 Rural Marital Fertility (Ig) at Consecutive Cen­ sus Dates, by Province of European Russia: 1897 vs. 1926, 1926 vs. 1940, 1940 vs. 1959, and 1959 vs. 1970 Urban Marital Fertility (Ig) at Consecutive Census Dates, by Province of European Rus­ sia: 1897 vs. 1926, 1926 vs. 1940, 1940 vs. 1959, and 1959 vs. 1970 Relation of Urban Marital Fertility (Is) to Rural Marital Fertility (Ig), Provinces of Eu­ ropean Russia: 1897-1970

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.8

Figure 2.9

Figure 2.10

Figure 2.11

Figure 2.12

Figure 2.13

Figure 2.14

Relation of Marital Fertility (/„) in Major Cit­ ies to Marital Fertility (Ig) in Remainder of Urban Areas, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Relation of Rural Ig, 1926 and 1959, to Pro­ portion of Population Consisting of Eastern or Western Nationalities Relation of Marital Fertility (/„) of Rural Rus­ sians to Marital Fertility (Ig) of Remainder of Rural Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1926 Relation of Marital Fertility (Ig) of Rural Ukrainians to Marital Fertility (Ig) of Re­ mainder of Rural Population, Provinces of Eu­ ropean Russia: 1926 Relation of Marital Fertility (Ig) of Urban Jews to Marital Fertility (Ig) of Remainder of Urban Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1926 Relation of Marital Fertility (/„) of Urban Jews to Marital Fertility (Ig) of Remainder of Urban Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Relation of Marital Fertility (Ig) of Rural Rus­ sians to Marital Fertility (Ig) of Rural Eastern Nationalities, European Russian ASSRs: 1970

50

72

76

77

78

79

82

CHAPTER 3 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 3.6

Figure 3.7

Rural Marital Fertility (I0), European Repub­ lics: 1897-1970 Rural Marital Fertility (Ig), Non-European Republics: 1897-1970 Urban Marital Fertility (Ig), European Repub­ lics: 1897-1970 Urban Marital Fertility (Ig), Non-European Republics: 1897-1970 Measure of Fertility Control (m) for Sweden 1875-1960 and for Taiwan 1956-1972 Measure of Fertility Control (m) for each Five-Year Age Group, 25-29 to 45-49, by Re­ public: 1959-1970 Relation of Median Value of Measure of Fer­ tility Control (m) to Marital Fertility (Ig), by Republic: 1959 and 1970

90 91 92 93 96

99

100

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.8

Relation of Rural Marital Fertility (/„) to Percentage of Population Consisting of East­ ern Nationalities: 1959

CHAPTER 4 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2a Figure 4.2b

Figure 4.2c

Figure 4.2d

Figure 4.3

Figure 4.4

Figure 4.5

Figure 4.6

Proportion Married (/,„), by Republic, Rural and Urban: 1897-1970 Proportion Married by Age, by Republic, Rural Areas, European Republics: 1897-1970 Proportion Married by Age, by Republic, Ur­ ban Areas, European Republics: 1897-1970 (continued) Proportion Married by Age, by Republic, Ru­ ral Areas, Non-European Republics: 18971970 (continued) Proportion Married by Age, by Republic, Ur­ ban Areas, Non-European Republics: 18971970 (continued) Relation of Rural Proportion Married at Ages 40-49 to Rural Sex Ratio at Ages 35-54 (M/F), by Republic: 1959 Relation of Rural Proportion Married at Ages 30-39 in 1970 to the Natural Logarithm of Rural Proportion Single at Ages 30-39 in 1926, by Republic Proportion Ever-Married at Age 50 and Aver­ age Age at Marriage (SMAM), Rural Popula­ tions of the Republics of Russia in the Late 19th Century and Selected West European, East European, and Non-European Populations Relation of Index of Proportion Married (Im) in 1970 to Index in 1897, Union Republics

123 126

127

128

129

133

134

139 144

CHAPTER 5 Figure 5.1

Figure 5.2

Figure 5.3

Relation of Rural Proportion Married (Im) to Region Numbered from Baltic, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Relation of Urban Proportion Married ( I m ) to Rural Proportion Married ( I m ) , Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Relation of Mean Age at Marriage 1871-1880 to Mean Age at Marriage 1898-1908, Prov­ inces of European Russia

151

155

156

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 5.4

Figure 5.5

Figure 5.6

Figure 5.7

Figure 5.8

Figure 5.9

Relation of Proportion Married ( I m ) of Rural Russians to Proportion Married (Im) of Re­ mainder of Rural Population, Provinces of Eu­ ropean Russia: 1897 Relation of Proportion Married (Im) of Rural Ukrainians to Proportion Married (Im) of Re­ mainder of Rural Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Relation of Proportion Married (Im) of Rural Poles to Proportion Married (/„,) of Re­ mainder of Rural Population, Provinces of Eu­ ropean Russia: 1897 Relation of Proportion Married (Im) of Rural Tatars to Proportion Married (Im) of Re­ mainder of Rural Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Relation of Proportion Married (Im) of Rural Jews to Proportion Married (Im) of Remainder of Rural Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Relation of Change in Mean Age at Marriage (1871-1880 to 1898-1908) to Change in Fe­ male Proportion Literate at Ages 20-29 (18771906)

160

161

162

164

165

176

CHAPTER 6 Figure 6.1

Figure 6.2

Figure 6.3

Figure 6.4

Figure 6.5

Figure 6.6

Proportion Married ( I m ) , Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (1,), Rural Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Is), and Overall Fertility (It), Rural Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia: 1926 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Is), and Overall Fertility (I1), Rural Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia: 1959 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (I1), Rural Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia: 1970 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ie), and Overall Fertility (Ir), Urban Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ie), and Overall Fertility (I1), Urban Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia: 1926

180

181

182

183

184

185

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 6.7

Figure 6.8

Figure 6.9

Figure 6.10

Figure 6.11

Figure 6.12

Figure 6.13

Figure 6.14

Figure 6.15

Figure 6.16

Figure 6.17

Figure 6.18

Figure 6.19

Figure 6.20

Figure 6.21

Proportion Married (/„), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (I,), Urban Popu­ lation, Provinces of European Russia: 1959 Proportion Married (/,„), Marital Fertility (Is), and Overall Fertility (I1), Urban Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia: 1970 Distribution of Ig) Points, Rural Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia, 1897, 1926, 1959, and 1970 Distribution of (/„„ Ig) Points, Urban Popula­ tion, Provinces of European Russia, 1897, 1926, 1959, and 1970 Proportion Married (/„), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (Ir), Rural Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1897 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (If), Rural Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1926 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (It), Rural Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1959 Proportion Married (Im.), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (1,), Rural Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1970 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (I1), Urban Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1897 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ig), and Overall Fertility (If), Urban Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1926 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (Ii), and Overall Fertility (If), Urban Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1959 Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (I11), and Overall Fertility (I,), Urban Popula­ tion, Union Republics: 1970 Distribution of (Im, Ig) Points, Rural Popula­ tions, Union Republics, 1897, 1926, 1959, and 1970 Distribution of ( I m , I g ) Points, Urban Popula­ tions, Union Republics, 1897, 1926, 1959, and 1970 Changes in ( I m , I g ) in the Rural Population, Individual European Republics, 1897-1970

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199 200

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 6.22 Changes in (I m , I g ) in the Urban Population, Individual European Republics, 1897-1970 Figure 6.23 Changes in I g ) in the Rural Population, Individual Non-European Republics, 18971970 Figure 6.24 Changes in (/„„ I g ) in the Urban Population, Individual Non-European Republics, 18971970

201

202

203

APPENDIX A Figure A.l

Birth Rate Estimated from the Proportion Un­ der Age Ten Compared with Birth Rate Calcu­ lated from Registered Births, Total Population by Province, 1897 Figure A.2 Birth Rate Estimated from the Proportion Un­ der Age One Compared with Birth Rate Calcu­ lated from Registered Births, Total Population by Province, 1897 Figure A.3 Birth Rate Estimated from the Proportion Un­ der Age One Compared with Birth Rate Calcu­ lated from Registered Births, Rural Population by Province, 1897 Figure A.4 Birth Rate Estimated from the Proportion Un­ der Age One Compared with Birth Rate Calcu­ lated from Registered Births, Urban Population by Province, 1897 Figure A.5 Ratio of Registered Birth Rate to Estimated Birth Rate in the Rural Population, and the Corresponding Ratio in the Urban Population, by Province, 1897 Figure A.6 Urban Marital Fertility ( I g ) and Rural Marital Fertility Calculated from Registered Births, by Province, 1897 Figure A.7 Urban Marital Fertility ( I g ) and Rural Marital Fertility Calculated from Births Allocated Ac­ cording to Number of Children Under Age One, by Province, 1897 Figure A.8 Urban Marital Fertility ( I g ) Calculated from Registered Births, by Province, 1897, and Ur­ ban Marital Fertility, by Province, 1926 Figure A.9 Urban Marital Fertility (/„) Calculated from Births Allocated According to Number of Chil­ dren Under Age One, by Province, 1897, and Urban Marital Fertility, by Province, 1926

208

209

211

212

214

215

216

217

218

LIST OF FIGURES Figure A.10 Ratio of Urban Relative Completeness (regis­ tered births) / (births estimated from number of children under age one) to Rural Relative Completeness, and Ratio of Urban Marital Fertility (/,) Calculated from Registered Births to Rural Marital Fertility Calculated from Registered Births, by Province, 1897 Figure A.11 Ratio of Urban Relative Completeness (regis­ tered births) / (births estimated from number of children under age one) to Rural Relative Completeness, and Ratio of Urban Marital Fer­ tility (/„) Calculated from Number of Children Under Age One to Rural Marital Fertility Cal­ culated from Number of Children Under Age One, by Province, 1897 Figure A.12 Birth Rate Calculated from the Proportion Un­ der Age Five and Birth Rate Calculated from Registered Births, by Province, RSFSR and Ukraine, 1926 Figure A.13 Birth Rate Estimated from the Proportion Under Age χ (b(x)), Georgia and Uzbek SSR, 1926 Figure A.14 Birth Rate Estimated from the Proportion Under Age χ (b(x)), Georgia and Uzbek SSR, 1897

219

220

229

243

245

APPENDIX B Figure B.l

Survival Ratios from 1959 to 1970 (Divided by Median Ratio for Five European Nationali­ ties) for Various Nationalities of the Soviet Union

249

List of Maps CHAPTER 2 Map 2.1

Rural Marital Fertility (Is), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1897 Map 2.2 Rural Marital Fertility (Ip), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1926 Map 2.3 Rural Marital Fertility (1,), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1940 Map 2.4 Rural Marital Fertility (Ig), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1959 Map 2.5 Rural Marital Fertility (Ig), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1970 Map 2.6 Urban Marital Fertility (Ig), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1897 Map 2.7 Urban Marital Fertility (Ig), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1926 Map 2.8 Urban Marital Fertility (Ie), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1959 Map 2.9 Urban Marital Fertility (Ig), Provinces of Euro­ pean Russia: 1970 Map 2.10 Proportion of Eastern and Western Nationalities in Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Map 2.11 Proportion of Eastern and Western Nationalities in Population, Provinces of European Russia: 1959

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

69

70

CHAPTER 5 Map 5.1 Map 5.2 Map 5.3 Map 5.4 Map 5.5 Map 5.6

Rural Proportion Married ( I m ) , Provinces of Eu­ ropean Russia: 1897 Urban Proportion Married (Im), Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Rural Average Age at Marriage (SMAM), Prov­ inces of Russia: 1897 Urban Average Age at Marriage (SMAM), Prov­ inces of Russia: 1897 Average Population per Village, Provinces of European Russia: 1897 Proportion Literate among Rural Females Aged 20-29: 1897

149 150 152 153 170 171

t xix ]

LIST OF MAPS Map 5.7

Urban Sex Ratio (M/F) at Ages 40-49 minus Total Sex Ratio (M/F) at Ages 40-49, Prov­ inces of European Russia: 1897

172

Kiev Guberniia as of 1897, with the Areas for which 1926 Data Were Combined to Represent Guberniia in 1926

226

APPENDIX A Map A.l

Preface In 1963 a plan was formulated at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University to document the decline in the rate of childbearing in Europe, province by province. In nearly every one of the more than seven hundred European provinces women today are bearing no more than half the number of children born a few generations ear­ lier; however, the timing and the pace of this nearly universal decline in fertility differs widely from area to area. The principal purpose of the European Fertility Project is a better understanding of the circum­ stances that have contributed to a lower rate of childbearing, cir­ cumstances that may be of considerable interest for rapidly growing populations today. An incidental purpose is to record and analyze a significant feature of the recent social history of every European popu­ lation. The project has taken the form of a series of country studies carried out at Princeton and by colleagues at other American universities and in Europe. The studies utilize the same set of fertility measures, and each aims to cover the period from the beginning of the modern de­ cline to its end, or in some instances, to the present. This is the sixth book to present results of research on the fertility of particular Euro­ pean populations. The first five—A Century of Portuguese Fertility and A History of Italian Fertility during the Last Two Centuries by Mas­ simo Livi-Bacci, The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871-1939 by John Knodel, The Decline of Belgian Fertility, 1800-1970 by Ron J. Lesthaeghe, and The Female Population of France in the Nineteenth Century by Etienne van de Walle—have dealt with geographic sub­ divisions within countries in Southern or Western Europe. Other stud­ ies of Great Britain, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and a second volume on France are in process. In addition to books and articles on national populations, a conference is planned (in 1979) at which there will be a summary presentation of province-by-province statistics for all of Europe and a series of papers dealing with particular features of Euro­ pean fertility history, such as rural-urban differences, the geographical clustering of fertility patterns, and the relations to education and infant mortality. This study of the decline in the rate of childbearing among the popu-

PREFACE lations that now constitute the Soviet Union deals in greatest detail with Europeans, but it also extends into Asia to encompass peoples who at the time of the 1917 Revolution had ways of life and demographic characteristics that were non-European. As the reader will see, this diversity of the Soviet population has had a strong continuing effect on trends in fertility. A special statement about the statistical dat~ employed in this study is required. A large mass of basic statistics has been assembled over a period of some thirteen years, primarily by Erna Harm. Intensive adjustments and estimates have been made because of gaps and defects in what has been recorded and published. The statistical material most directly related to our conclusions is presented in the maps, figures, and tables in this volume. The sources from which the basic fertility indexes were calculated are listed in Appendix D; the methods of adjustment and estimation employed are described in Appendix A; and supplementary data on fertility of the unmarried are presented in Appendix C. This material, extensive though it may appear, is only a small tip of a large iceberg. The computer printouts that we have accumulated would make a pile at least thirty feet high, and we also have many folders of xeroxed or photostated tables. The primary data and basic adjustments that existed in machine-readable form and that are most likely to be useful have been stored on magnetic tape at the Princeton University Computer Center. A catalog listing the contents of the material on tape appears in the April 1979 issue of Population Index, together with information about how a copy of the tape may be obtained. Advice and help in diverse forms for this research has come from many sources. Warren Eason made a particularly valuable contribution by insisting that the non-European populations could not be omitted from the study. For several years he has exchanged data and ideas with the Office of Population Research as he has pursued somewhat parallel research interests. Michael Stoto and T. James Trussell devised the programs for calculating the ellipses that help to summarize the changing distribution of fertility; Donald McNeil also gave valuable technical advice. Helena Choynacka contributed useful ideas about the cause of differences in age at marriage in Russia and also made available data that she had assembled. Daniel Baumol and John Chow contributed extensive statistical calculations and other skilled research assistance. [ xxii ]

PREFACE Etienne van de Walle, Massimo Livi-Bacci, John Knodel, and Ron Lesthaeghe, the authors of the earlier books in the series, provided helpful models for our analysis and useful ideas and comments at vari­ ous stages. Andrejs PIakans generously supplied unpublished data from his own research. Plakans, Trussell, Bryan Boulier, Jane Menken, D. Peter Mazur, and Gilbert Rozman suggested corrections of fact, wording, or statistical procedure after reading the manuscript. Noreen Goldman and Hannah Kaufman helped to make final corrections in calculations and statistical analysis. Richard Boscarino prepared the figures and maps. Anne Ryder typed most of the manuscript, cheer­ fully persisting through several drafts of most chapters and often working from notoriously illegible handwriting. The European Fertility Project was initiated with the help of a modest grant from the Population Council that enabled Coale, while on leave in Italy in 1963, to visit several Eastern European capitals in search of data and possible cooperation on the prospective project; by support from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1964 for an exploratory phase; by a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation; by six and a half years of support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; and by a grant from the Rockefeller Founda­ tion to fund the last stages of the project. None but the authors is responsible for the defects and errors that remain in this book. Ansley J. Coale Barbara A. Anderson Erna Harm

Provinces of European Russia, 1897 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Archangel Astrakhan Bessarabia Vilna Vitebsk Vladimir Vologda Volhynia Voronezh Vyatka 11. Grodno 12. Don 13. Ekaterinoslav

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Kazan Kaluga Kiev Kovno Kostroma Kurland Kursk Livonia Minsk Mogilev Moscow Nizhni Novgorod Novgorod

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

Olonets Orenburg Orel Penza Perm Podolsk Poltava Pskov Ryazan Samara St. Petersburg Saratov Simbirsk

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Smolensk Tavrida Tambov Tver Tula Ufa Kharkov Kherson Chernigov Estonia Yaroslavl

Provinces of European Russia, 1959 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Archangel Vologda Kaliningrad Leningrad Murmansk Novgorod Pskov Karelian ASSR Komi ASSR Briansk Vladimir Ivanov Kalinin Kaluga Kostroma Moscow Ryazan Smolensk Tula Yaroslavl

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

Gorkii Kirov Mari ASSR Mordvian ASSR Chuvash ASSR Belgorod Voronezh Kursk Lipetsk Orel Tambov Astrakhan Volgograd Kuibishev Penza Saratov Ulianov Tatar ASSR Rostov Kalmyk ASSR

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Orenburg Perm Sverdlov CheIiabinsk Bashkir ASSR Udmurt ASSR Dnepropetrovsk Donets Zaporczhie Lugansk Poltava Sumy Kharkov Vinnitza Volhynia Zhitomir Trans Carpathian Ivan Franko Kiev Kirov

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Lvov Rovensk Ternopol Khmelnitskii Cherkassy Chernigov Chernovits Crimean Nikolaev Odessa Kherson Brest Vitebsk Gomel Grodno Minsk Mogilev Moldavia Lithuania Latvia Estonia

HUMAN FERTILITY IN RUSSIA SINCE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER 1: Introduction In the last two centuries, two widely occurring basic changes in the dynamics of population have profoundly modified the lifetime experience of individuals and the structure of the societies in which they live: a dramatic increase in the average duration of life; and a dramatic decrease in the average number of children women bear by the end of their po­ tentially fertile years. The mean length of life has increased as the risk of dying has bee'n reduced at every age because of increases in real in­ come and improvements in preventive and curative medicine; the num­ ber of children born has declined as married couples have been success­ ful in deliberate efforts to restrict childbearing. The decline in mortality has in many instances doubled the mean duration of life, and the de­ cline in fertility has frequently reduced by one-half the number of chil­ dren women bear. The decrease in mortality began in Western Europe in the late eight­ eenth century with rather modest declines in death rates, and it has continued up to the present. Once death rates began to fall in Latin America, Asia, and Africa (much later, often only within the past few decades), the reductions were frequently very large. The fall in death rates has by now become so general that it has been shared by every national population in the world. The decrease in fertility—the sustained modern decline that is associated with the spread of voluntary birth control—became evident on a national scale in France by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and perhaps began at about the same time in the United States.1 In Western European countries other than France, the decline began in the second half of the nineteenth century. It began later in Southern and Eastern Europe—in Albania, as late as the postWorld War II period. Before 1910, large decreases in fertility had been initiated in most overseas areas populated by Europeans, including (in addition to the United States) Canada, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. A very large fall has also occurred in Japan, although the date of its beginning is hard to determine from the available records. The decline in fertility has been a universal feature of the recent his­ tory of all countries that are usually accepted as the most highly de­ veloped, that is, those characterized by a fully modern organization of society and economic life. Fertility has also begun to fall, usually at a faster rate than was experienced by European populations, in many

INTRODUCTION

countries that are not so highly modernized. Unlike the decline in mortality, however, a reduction in fertility has not yet started in all national populations. Little or no change is evident in some populations in Asia (none in Bangladesh, parts of India, and Afghanistan, for example), in Africa (for example, no change in virtually all of tropical Africa, nor in parts of north Africa), nor in Latin America (little change, for example, in Bolivia, Peru, and, until very recently at least, Mexico). Lower mortality has an obvious implication of great importance to the individual: longer life itself. Lower death rates also mean that siblings and friends survive rather than die at an early age. With present-day low mortality rates, a child usually reaches his adult years without experiencing the death of a brother, sister, or close friend, and frequently with both parents still alive-all outcomes of childhood life that would have been exceptional a few generations back. Parents now rarely lose children, and the early disruption of marriage by death of a spouse has become uncommon. The forces that have reduced mortality have also brought reductions in chronic fever and other debilitating or painful consequences of infectious disease. To the individual child, lower fertility means that he grows up in the company of fewer siblings. When low fertility is combined with low mortality, children more frequently have living parents and grandparents, but young adults have fewer children, and older adults fewer grandchildren. Reduced fertility and mortality affect society as a whole, first of all by increasing the rate of growth and altering the age structure of the population. The decline in mort~lity, which often precedes the fall in fertility, has caused a truly exceptional increase in global population. In 170 years the popUlation of the world has increased from 1 billion to 4 billion; under the most favorable combinations of fertility and mortality of earlier eras the global population would not have doubled in this interval. The greatest acceleration of growth has been in the recent experience of the less developed countries, where mortality has dropped very sharply and fertility has not yet fallen. Mexico's population has doubled from 30 to 60 million in just 20 years. The greatest alteration in age distribution resulting from these changes in vital rates is a shift to an older population, caused by the decline in fertility; indeed, the reduction in mortality alone, concentrated as it is at the younger ages, makes a population younger. This com[4]

INTRODUCTION

positional change has reduced the fraction of children (for example, in the United States the proportion under 15 has fallen from 49.8 per­ cent in 1800 to 28.5 percent), increased the median age (from 16 to 28 years in the United States) and caused a rise in the proportion that is aged (the proportion over 65 has risen from less than 2 percent to nearly 10 percent). The social effects of altered age composition extend from changes in the burden of dependency to the subtler differences in atmosphere that distinguish an old population from a young one. In Mexico City or Bangkok, it is the children who are numerically predominant; in Vienna or Stockholm, it is the aged. This feature, as well as differences in language, climate, and appearance of buildings, creates a difference in tone that is quite evident to the visitor. There has been much speculation about the causes of the reductions in the birth and death rates. The best known set of ideas is the theory of the demographic transition (sometimes called the vital revolution), which finds a persuasive association between the reduction of mortality and fertility and the altered social and economic conditions that are a natural part of the change to modern technology and industrial organi­ zation. Many of the ideas that constitute the theory of the demographic transition were developed by European social scientists before World War I and were fully elaborated in Europe and America in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The demographic transition is invoked in simplified form today to support various positions in politicized debates concern­ ing the best strategy for moderating very high fertility in the less de­ veloped countries. "Development is the best contraceptive"—obviously a distillation of the theory—was one of the popular slogans at the World Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974. The demographic transition is an interpretation of trends in fertility and mortality in a few European countries that had conveniently available data. This interpretation is buttressed by detailed information about particular subpopulations, such as patients at birth control clinics and respondents in select surveys. In 1962, at Princeton University, John Knodel and Nathaniel Iskandar collaborated in studying the de­ cline in fertility, at the national level, in a number of European coun­ tries. They made the surprising discovery that the decline in marital fertility in Hungary began at about the same time, and proceeded at about the same pace, as in England and Wales. In Hungary in 1880 the population was still predominantly rural, deaths of children under

INTRODUCTION

age one were more than 25 percent of live births, illiteracy rates were still high, and industrialization had just begun. By contrast, England in 1880 was the acknowledged pioneer in industrialization, was twothirds urban, had a moderate infant mortality rate of about 14 percent, and was far advanced toward the achievement of universal primary education. This unexpectedly parallel course of falling marital fertility (and the equally surprising parallelism of marital fertility in Norway and Rumania) brought into question any simple connection between industrialization, or general improvements in the level of living, and the reduction in fertility. At about the same time that Knodel and Iskandar were conducting their research, William Leasure was writing his doctoral dissertation, in which he analyzed trends in fertility from the late nineteenth century to 1950 in Spain, province by province. Leasure found that in 1910, in the midst of changing marital fertility for Spain as a whole, levels of marital fertility were clustered at a similar value among the provinces within each of the major regions of Spain. For example, marital fertility was low in all of the provinces of Catalonia, although some of these provinces were agrarian and not high in the national scale of literacy, while others, including Barcelona, were relatively advanced in industrialization and literacy. Leasure's findings were also difficult to reconcile with a theory that postulates a strong and direct relation of industrialization, spreading education, and similar social changes with declining fertility. In 1963 a plan was conceived at the Office of Population Research to investigate more thoroughly the experience that, through incomplete and impressionistic observation, had provided the prototype for the theory of the demographic transition: the decline of fertility in Europe. The plan was to extract from the unusually complete and accurate population statistics in Europe a record of how fertility has changed within areas smaller than whole nations-areas such as provinces, guberniias, counties, and departements-in order to examine the social and economic circumstan,ces under which the decline occurred in each such small area. There are some seven hundred "provinces" in Europe, and by 1970 fertility had fallen substantially in virtually every one; yet the date of the initiation of the decline in individual provinces extends from before 1800 to after 1950. For most areas, vital statistics and census data from the period of the decline are gratifyingly full [6]

INTRODUCTION

and accurate, at least in comparison with most of the rest of the world. Thus we have thought of Europe as a kind of statistical laboratory in which propositions about the pattern and causes of the modern fertility decline could be tested. The scope of the project has exceeded the somewhat naive expecta­ tions that were held when it was launched. Forty-eight articles and a doctoral dissertation have already been completed; books on the his­ tory of fertility in Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium are already published; and work on book-length manuscripts on Great Britain and Switzerland is nearly finished. The present study reports our findings after assembling and analyz­ ing the record of the decline in the rate of childbearing within the area that now constitutes the Soviet Union. It does not cover areas that were permanently separated from Russia at the end of World War I, such as Poland. The original intention was to limit the study of Russia to its European provinces (the overall project is thought of as an examination of European fertility), but the value of comparing the experience of European Russia with that of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia was too appealing. Therefore, two sets of geographical areas have been subjected to comparative study: the provinces of the areas that constituted European Russia before the 1917 Revolution; and the republics of the Soviet Union, as defined after World War II. In spite of rather formidable problems of inadequate data, Russia was an irresistible choice as a case study of declining fertility, for it offers a chance to test in a very different setting from the rest of Europe ideas about how fertility fell. Part of the fascination of Russia is its diversity. In the late nineteenth century European Russia was, as a whole, the poorest and economically least advanced large European nation; at the same time, the material conditions of life in a few provinces were as favorable as those in Western Europe. The extraordinary differences within European Russia in 1897 are illustrated by the range of varia­ tion in selected characteristics of the fifty European provinces: ex­ pectation of life at birth from 29 to 52 years; infant mortality from 147 to 415 deaths per 1,000 live births; population dependent on agri­ culture from 25 to 90 percent of the total; proportion literate among women 20-29 years of age from 8 to 98 percent. The diversity of the Russian population was not limited to the great differences in these material conditions of life. There was also great

INTRODUCTION heterogeneity in ethnic origin, language, and national identity within European Russia, and even more within the empire as a whole. In European Russia alone, there were twenty-six groups of more than 100,000 persons, each with a sufficiently distinct nationality (including a distinct language) to be tabulated separately in the 1897 census; if the Asian parts of the empire are included, the number of such groups jumps to forty-three. These nationalities differed in religion, economic and social organization, customs, and traditions. Religions having many adherents included several Christian sects: Greek Orthodox (Great Russians, Ukrainians, the majority of White Russians, Georgians, Ru­ manians, and Finnish groups); Roman Catholic (Lithuanians, Poles, and many White Russians); Lutheran Protestants (Estonians and Latvians); and the distinct branch of Christianity maintained by the Armenians. There were also many Muslims of two principal sects: Sunni Muslims (Turkmen, Tadzhiks, and Uzbeks) and Shiite Muslims (Azerbaidzhani). Jews were concentrated in a few western provinces, but constituted a substantial minority in some of these. There were also some Buddhists (Kalmyks near the Volga, and Koreans and Chinese in far eastern Siberia). The ethnic, linguistic, and religious heterogeneity of the Russian population was the result of many centuries of invasion and conquest: from the west by Scandinavians, Germans, and Poles, and from the east by diverse Asiatic peoples, including Mongols and Tatars. The countervailing expansion from the center to the west, south, and east by the nationality that now is numerically dominant—the Great Rus­ sians—contributed greatly to the present diversity by the conquest of territory inhabited by many different national groups. At the end of the nineteenth century, then, the majority population of Russia was the Great Russians, who were Greek Orthodox and 85 percent rural, who had a tradition of patriarchal family organization and of hereditary serfdom (abolished only in 1861), and with 17 per­ cent of their women 20-29 literate. At the same time, at one geographic and cultural extreme were the Latvians, who were Lutheran, 84 percent rural, long dominated by German landlords and still culturally related to Germany and Scandinavia, liberated from serfdom in 1817, and with 98 percent of their women 20-29 literate. At the other extreme, in Central Asia, were the Kirgiz, who were Muslim, 99 percent rural,

INTRODUCTION mostly pastoral nomads, and with fewer than 1 percent of their women 20-29 literate. A second feature that makes Russia an interesting instance to con­ sider in a comparative study of declining fertility in Europe is the pro­ found economic, social, and political change that all segments of the Russian population have experienced. These changes are exactly the kind considered in the theory of the demographic transition to be the source of reductions in fertility: mortality has been reduced to a low level everywhere; urban residence has to a great extent replaced rural residence; industrialization has been consistently pursued by a powerful government as a goal of the highest priority; universal education is the norm in every area; and unparalleled emphasis has been given to em­ ployment of women outside of the household. Since the Revolution, there has been a ceaseless effort in schools, press, radio, television, and the Party apparatus to change bourgeois attitudes and traditional be­ liefs of the sort that might otherwise have impeded the acceptance of controlled fertility. What has been the course of fertility in the diverse segments of Rus­ sian society during the twentieth century, and has this course been affected by the particular nature of the Russian experience? These are the questions to which the research reported in this book is addressed.2

OVERALL FERTILITY, MARITAL FERTILITY, AND PROPORTION MARRIED In this section the principal measures of fertility employed in the European Fertility Project (and, of course, also in this book) are de­ fined, a graphical method of presenting the different measures of fer­ tility simultaneously is explained, and, by the use of this graphical procedure, fertility in European Russia as a whole from 1897 to 1970 is compared with the experience of other European countries during the same period. The overall fertility of the potentially fertile women in any popula­ tion can be expressed as the product of two factors: the proportion of the potentially fertile women who are regularly cohabiting in a sexual union and are thus exposed to the possibility of childbearing; and the rate of childbearing among these cohabiters. This partitioning of overall

INTRODUCTION fertility into two component factors is useful in a comparative historical study of European fertility because, for most European populations over most of the period of adequate records of fertility, exposure to the risk of childbearing has been mostly (never wholly) confined to currently married women. Thus overall fertility can be adequately approximated as the product of the proportion married among women aged 15 to 50, and the fertility of married women of childbearing age. Explicit allowance for marriage as a factor in fertility is in turn important because the diversity in the proportion married among women 15 to 50 in Europe has been very large, and because the social conditions and individual attitudes that affect whether and at what age marriage occurs are quite different from the factors that determine whether 0

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\ \

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• Serbia

If 06

Belgium ..........

\

England

.

0 .5

..

.

Ne!tlerlands

0.4

Ireland

or ~ .

0 .3

0.2

0

0

0 .1

:1

~~.OO----40~'O----O~~2-0---0+1-30----0~~'O----O+.S-O--~O~-W----O~~7-0---40~-M---40~~ JG

o,,,c.

of Po,loIlallof'l Re.earch , Punceton

Figure 1.1

[ 10 ]

UtIlV.'~' ly

Proportion Married (1 m), Marital Fertility (I.), and Overall Fertility (I,), Various European Populations : 1900

INTRODUCTION

childbearing of couples already married is deliberately restricted by contraception or abortion. As part of the original plan for comparative research on changes in fertility in the provinces of Europe, three distinct indexes were de­ vised to measure overall fertility, marital fertility, and the proportion married. The index of overall fertility (/;) is defined as the number of births occurring to the women aged 15 to 50 in a given population, rela­ tive to the number they would have if women at each age experienced the rate of childbearing at that age of the most prolific sizable popula­ tion for which there are reliable statistics, the Hutterites. 3 The index of marital fertility (I g ) is the number of births occurring to currently married women relative to the number they would bear if subject to

Bulgorio

Yugoslav Russia Poland Franc

Greece

Germany

Portugal

Austria Sweden

Ireland

4) . 0 0

0.10

0.20

0.30

ΌΛΌ

IG

0.50

0.60

0.70

0.80

0.90

Oftiee of Population Research, Princeton University

Figure 1.2

Proportion Married (Im), Marital Fertility (/,,), and Overall Fertil­ ity (Ir), Various European Populations: 1930

INTRODUCTION

Hutterite marital fertility rates. If and I 9 have values that in principle are confined between zero (no childbearing at all) and one (attained only if all women, or all married women, kept up with the most fertile population on record). The index of proportion married (lm) is defined as the number of children married women would produce, relative to the number all women would produce, if both sets of women experienced the Hutterite fertility schedule. It is a fertility-weighted aggregate index of marriage that gives more weight to the proportions married at the prolific ages (less than 30) than at the less prolific older ages. Like the other two indexes, it is confined to the interval zero (no women married) to one (all women 15 to 50 married). If illegitimate births are numerically insignificant, the three indexes satisfy the

o

If

.,;

0 .6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0 .2

0.1

-- _ -+-_ 0.10

_ ______+__ 0.20

- - - + 1 - - - + - 1-~I 0 . 70 D.BO 0.90

- ~_+__·-___41---+-1

0.30

0.110

0.50

0.60

JG

Figure 1.3

[ 12 ]

Proportion Married (1m), Marital Fertility (I.), and Overall Fertility (I,), Various European Populations: 1960

INTRODUCTION equation I1 — Im · lg. Overall fertility is factored into the proportion married times marital fertility.4 The factoring of overall fertility ( I f ) into two components, marital fertility (Ig) and proportion married (Im), led Paul Demeny (Demeny, 1968) to devise a two-dimensional diagram on which the two com­ ponents and the resultant overall fertility can be shown at the same time. Im forms the vertical axis, and Ig the horizontal axis. Thus a sin­ gle point portrays both the index of the proportion married, and the index of marital fertility of a population—one read on the horizontal scale, and the other on the vertical. Overall fertility (If) of the popula­ tion in question can also be read on the same diagram if a series of curves (contour lines, or isoquants) are drawn, each line representing

Bulgaria * Rumaliia

0.6

Northern Ireland

Finland

0,5

Irelond

0.3

a ο *%.00

0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

IG

0.50

0.60

0.70

0.80

0.90

Office of Popufotien Research, Prmcefon University

Figure 1.4

Proportion Married ( I m ) , Marital Fertility ( I i ) , and Overall Fertil­ ity (If), Various European Populations: 1970

INTRODUCTION

all points where I 1 (which equals I m · I g ) is equal to 0.1, or to 0.2, etc. In Figures 1.1 to 1.4 the fertility of European Russia is compared in this diagrammatic fashion with the fertility of other European coun­ tries. The four dates are around 1900 (1897 for Russia), 1930 (1926 for Russia), 1960 (1959 for Russia), and 1970. In 1900 (Figure 1.1), the factor responsible for the greater part of variation in overall fer­ tility is Im\ all of the Western European countries but Spain fall below 0.550, whereas Hungary, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Russia, and Serbia are all above 0.650. Ig is above 0.600 in all but France, England and Wales, Belgium, and Hungary. European Russia is among the highest in both components. In 1930, the decline in marital fertility since 1900 in most European countries is very evident. At that date, European Russia is more conspicuous for its high fertility, although a careful comparison reveals a substantial fall in marital fertility in Rus­ sia also. By 1960, and especially by 1970, European Russia is lost in a cluster of other European countries. The reader may note other fea­ tures of European fertility in this part of the twentieth century: for example, the rise in I m in Western Europe, and the retention of low I m (and exceptionally high I g , although it had fallen) in Ireland; and, above all, the very extensive general decline in I g . The next two chapters provide a description and analysis of marital fertility within Russia, and chapters 4 and 5 give analogous treatment of the evolution of nuptiality and the proportion married.

CHAPTER 2 : The Evolution of Marital Fertility in

European Russia The subject of this chapter—how marital fertility has changed in European Russia—was the original main target of analysis when work on Russia was begun as part of the European Fertility Project. As the work progressed, the subject matter broadened to include the quite different trends of fertility in some of the non-European parts of Rus­ sia, partly because of possible parallels between the changes in fertility in the non-European populations of Russia and in less developed areas outside Russia. However, discussion of fertility in the non-European areas in Russia is deferred until the next chapter. Estimates of the year-by-year variation in marital fertility in Euro­ pean Russia since 1880 are presented in the first section of this chap­ ter. In subsequent sections, geographical variation in the marital fertil­ ity of rural and urban populations within European Russia is analyzed at five isolated dates from 1897 to 1970. These are dates for which in­ formation on age and marital status can be found in a census, and dates at which, in addition, the number of births has been revealed in the req­ uisite geographical detail.

ANNUAL VARIATIONS IN MARITAL FERTILITY IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA AS A WHOLE, 1881-1970

Estimates of I g (the index of marital fertility) in European Russia as a whole for each calendar year from 1881 to 1970 are presented in Table 2.1 and Figure 2.1. Values of Ig for single calendar years were determined by combining three component factors: a set of firmly based calculations of fertility indexes for five periods, each period centered on (or adjacent to) the year in which a census was taken; the year-to-year variation in the birth rate for all Russia from 1881 to 1970, as estimated by Jean-Noel Biraben of the Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques, Paris; and an allowance for gradual changes both in the ratio of the birth rate to the index of overall fertility (//) and in the index of the proportion married (Im).1 Note in Figure 2.1 the plateau in I g until just before 1900; the clear, if limited, decline before World War I; the steep drop during the war

MARITAL FERTILITY IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA years; the recovery in the mid-1920s (after the Civil War) to a value that is approximately the same as just before the war; the resumed decline in the late 1920s; the deep hollow from 1929 to 1936; the return from 1937 to 1939 to an Ig that can be interpreted as the result of the resump­ tion, at a slightly steeper rate, of the downtrend that began about 1900; the sharp decline in 1940 to a minimum in 1943; and the recovery to a postwar peak in 1949. The period from 1949 to 1960 appears as a return to the historic downward slope, and the 1960s are an interval of ac­ celerated decline. The line segments in Figure 2.1, roughly indicating the trend in I g when not subject to aberrations caused by prolonged crises, suggest that TABLE 2.1 INDEX OF MARITAL FERTILITY (I ) IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA, FOR SINGLE CALENDAR YEARS, 1881-1970

Year

Ig

Year

1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910

.759 .788 .776 .787 .770 .762 .768 .784 .774 .763 .777 .715 .756 .757 .770 .782 .777 .769 .767 .762 .744 .756 .737 .744 .688 .720 .726 .69J .690 .703

1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1?25 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940

I

g

.700 .670 .687 .651 .561 .439 .385 .462 .462 .484 .537 .554 .673 .656 .686 .670 .659 .648 .585 .559 .489 .425 .380 .395 .415 .436 .542 .521 .505 .430

Year

1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970

I

g

.308 .249 .189 .224 .288 .347 .384 .379 .417 .406 .408 .397 .373 .392 .374 .364 .364 .360 .352 .350 .334 .313 .295 .272 .256 .253 .238 .236 .234 .238

MARITAL FERTILITY IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA

I*. . I _

I

I

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1

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11

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τ d

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-

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Its

\ f

ι I

I

l

l

l

1880

1890

1900

1910

l 1920

I

l

l

l

l

1930

1940

1950

I960

1970

Offtce of Populotion Reseorch, Princeton University

Figure 2.1

Annual Values of Marital Fertility (Is), European Russia: 1881-1970

the index of marital fertility was declining at a rate of about —0.057 per decade from 1895-1899 to 1909-1913 and at about —0.10 per decade from 1924-1928 to 1966-1970. In crude terms, a gradual decline was occurring in Czarist Russia; it became steeper after the Revolution. If the basic trend in Iv is a prolonged decline from a plateau of about 0.78 in the late nineteenth century to a value less than one-third as great in 1970, this basic trend is interrupted by deep troughs during the First World War, the Revolution, and the Civil War, during the period of collectivization and purges, and during World War II. Obviously, events from 1914 to 1923, 1928 to 1935, and 1939 to 1946 caused very large reductions in the rate at which married women bore children. Little de­ tailed interpretation can be offered for these rapid declines and extended low periods in marital fertility. They occurred during years for which primary demographic data are nonexistent or inaccessible and for which information on social and economic conditions is also unsatisfactory. Moreover, even if a detailed analysis were possible, it would be a study of pathological instances of reduced fertility rather than of the normal conditions under which fertility falls. There is the possibility, which we

MARITAL FERTILITY IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA

can only mention without judging its probability, that these prolonged traumata strongly influenced subsequent trends. The sequence of Ig's for European Russia as a whole provides a con­ text for interpreting the changes in marital fertility within the provinces of European Russia, since the observations available for the smaller areas are limited to snapshots, as it were, at the reference periods around 1897 (births of 1895-1899), 1926 (births of 1925-1926), 1940, 1959 (births of 1957-1960), and 1970 (births of 1968-1971). The first ref­ erence period (1897) is at the end of a long interval of nearly constant Ig, and at the threshold of the sustained decline in European Russia; Ig s for individual provinces in 1897 should indicate whether the decline had already begun in provinces that were leaders in this new trend. The second reference period (1925-1926) constitutes a brief relatively un­ troubled time just after the trough caused by World War I and the Civil War, and just before the effects of collectivization and other turbulent events of the period 1929-1937. The small-area estimates for the next reference date (1940) for which Ig for individual provinces can be calcu­ lated suffer from severe limitations. There are no published separate figures for 1940 births occurring in rural and urban populations, nor can these be estimated from the age distribution. The absence of data at the oblast level on age composition and marital status means that If must be estimated from the birth rate and Im approximated by regression tech­ niques based on information on changes in nuptiality at the republic level. Separate estimates of It in 1940 for rural and urban populations are obtained by the crude assumption that the ratio of rural to urban Ig in each area was the average of the ratios for 1926 and 1959 (see Ap­ pendix A). Moreover, in some parts of European Russia births in 1926 were evidently underregistered; our indexes for some provinces in 1926 incorporate a birth rate estimated from the age distribution. Such adjustments (or tests) are not possible for 1940. We have no alter­ native but to accept the registered births; in some instances these are almost certainly underreported. The steep drop in I g for European Russia from 1939 to 1940—nearly one-third of the total change since 1925-1926 occurs in this one year— certainly appears in Figure 2.1 to reflect the beginning of the impact of World War II on Russian marital fertility. Yet neither extensive mili­ tary casualties nor the disruptive influence of the German invasion and occupation began before mid-1941, and the major impact of these events

MARITAL FERTILITY IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA occurred (because of the delay between conception and birth) in 1942 and later. The reduction in births in 1940 implies a reduction in concep­ tions that occurred primarily in 1939. In that year the Russian army invaded Poland and also fought the early battles of the war in Finland. Thus we may surmise that circumstances surrounding these military actions—the mobilization of troops, the disruption of life near the bor­ der by movement of the population into newly occupied territories, the forced transfer of Poles and Catholic White Russians—were the reason for the particularly sharp drop in fertility from 1939 to 1940. If true, individual instances of low fertility in 1940 may reflect the vagaries of policies and events of military origin rather than differences in more enduring social and economic trends. In other words, estimates of Ig in 1940 for the oblasts of European Russia are at best approximate, owing to inadequate detail in the published statistics and the possibility of underregistration of births for some areas. Even if exact, these estimates are interpretable only with caution, because of the probable effect of military factors. The last two reference periods (1959 and 1970) fall in intervals of peace and domestic quiet and can be more readily taken as illustrative of long-run trends. CHANGING DISTRIBUTION OF I g BY PROVINCE IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA FROM 1897 ΤΟ 1970 Various aspects of changing marital fertility in the provinces of Eu­ ropean Russia are described and analyzed in the remaining sections of this chapter. First, the changing frequency distribution of Ig—the changing fraction of provinces in which Ig lies in the intervals from 0.15-0.20 to 0.80-0.85—is presented for the rural, urban, and total provincial populations. The changing distribution of Ig provides the framework for analyzing the timing of the decline of marital fertility in the urban and rural populations. The discussion of timing is followed by an examination of how rural-urban differences in marital fertility evolved. We then summarize the geographical distribution of marital fertility (rural and urban) at the five reference dates from 1897 to 1970. Finally, the relation between Ig and various characteristics of the provinces, including nationality composition, occupies the last sections of the chapter. The data that will be discussed and shown in graphic form in the

TABLE 2 . 2 INDEXES OF FERTILITY IN 1897 FOR THE RURAL, URBAN, AND TOTAL POPULATIONS OF THE PROVINCES OF LUROPEAN RUSSIA, PRE-REVOLUTIONARY BOUNDARIES

PROVINCES

BCRAL

UEBAN I

h

Ig

m

TOTAL X

If

m

1

pnCHANGJL

0 . 4 75

0 . 718

0.636

0. 329

0.608

0.474

0.459

0.709

0.619

2

ASTRAKHAN

C. 6C0

0 . 7 05

0 .826

0.525

0 . 6 98

0.694

0.569

0.704

0. 809

3

EESSARAEIA

0. 529

0. 6S3

3.763

0 . 4 35

J.663

0.635

C.514

0. 680

0.742

4

VILNA

0.

Hit

C.739

0.58 1

0.326

0.593

0.494

C.428

0.722

0.570

5

VITEBSK

0 . 4 59

0. 760

o.5ei

0.363

0.691

0 . 4 96

C.444

0.751

0.568

6

VI. A D I 1 I R

0 . 574

0.791

0.714

0.362

C.561

0.604

C.546

0.765

0.700

7

VOLOGDA

0.

SCO

C.785

0 . 6 It

0 . 177

0.6K7

0. 487

0.494

0.

8

VOLHYNIA

0.528

0.711

0 .730

0.365

0.583

0 . 5 99

C. 515

0.703

C. 720

9

VOFONE2H

0. 665

0 . 813

0.814

0.122

C. 6 2 9

0.605

C. 648

0.803

0.799

10

VYATKA

0. 579

0. 807

C.689

0.363

0.65b

0.528

0.57 3

C. 8 0 4

0.684

1 1

GRCCNO

0.5C1

0.739

0.665

0.366

0.630

0.559

0. 479

0.724

0.648

0 . 627

C.753

0.823

0 . 4 18

C.583

0.632

C.598

0.733

0.796

0.637

C. 792

0.794

0.126

0.613

0.627

0.610

0. 776

0.772

0 . 545

0.762

C .704

0 .375

0.589

0.574

0.530

0.749

0.692

12 1 3

EK ATE R I N O SL AV

14

781

0.611

15

KALUGA

0.581

0 . 752

C.756

0.381

C.626

0.513

0.568

C.745

0.740

16

KIEV

0 . 564

C. 773

0.710

0. 352

0 . 582

0 . 537

0.534

0.752

0.665

17

KOVNO.

0 . 3 90

0 . 76C

0.502

0.355

C.667

0 . 497

0. J94

0. 752

0.502

18

KCSTBOrA

0.534

0.761

0.667

0.409

0.690

0.511

0.525

0.776

0.659

19

KURLAN D

0 . 297

0. 542

0.522

0.268

0.566

0.490

0.295

0.548

0.515

20

KUBSK

0 . 605

0. 797

0.755

0.143

0.697

0.615

0.590

0.789

0.742

21

LIVONIA

0 . 3 05

0.605

0.474

0.256

C.519

0.452

0.290

0 . 580

0.467

22

MINSK

0.515

0.757

0.663

0 . 387

0.683

0.545

0.501

0.750

0.650

23

HOGILEV

0 . 531

0.799

0.656

0 . 4 18

0.739

0 .545

0.524

0.795

0.646

21

lOSCOli

0. 571

0. 800

0.686

0.293

0.121

0.513

0.439

0.645

0.604

25

NIZHNI

0 . 593

0.771

0.752

0.395

0.613

0.593

0.575

0.759

0.737

26

NOVGOROD

0.159

0. 815

0.594

0.321

0.631

0.453

0.437

0 . 806

0.584

21

OLONITS

0 . 521

0.8C6

0.641

0.4C4

0.724

0.527

0.516

0 . 801

0.632

28

ORENBURG

0.655

0.6C6

0.801

0.570

0.766

0.122

C.646

0 . 802

0.793

29

OREL

0.613

0.811

0.751

0.420

0.643

0 .586

0.590

0.795

0.731

30

PEN Z A

0.619

0.793

0.775

0.478

0 . 7 29

0.625

0.606

0.788

0.761

0.606

0.797

0.723

NOVGOROD

PERU

0.621

C.807

0.734

0. 380

0.602

0.563

32

PODOLSK

0 . 503

0. 663

0. 723

0.424

0.653

0 . 6 16

0.497

0.681

0.715

33

POLTAVA

0. 565

0.776

0.712

0.115

0.686

0.572

0.549

0.768

0.697

3 1

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