Survival analysis of individual data from historical parish registers: analysis of population born from the end of the 18th century to 1830s in Jablonec, Czech lands

Ludmila Fialova, Charles University in Prague
Klara Hulikova Tesarkova, Charles University in Prague
Barbora Kuprova, Charles University in Prague

So far, works published in the field of historical demography have been commonly based on traditional methods of historical demography (family reconstitution method, simple descriptive statistics, etc.). However, historical data (most often individual records from parish registers) offer much more ways of analyses – including methods usually taken as representatives of (modern) methods of demographic analysis of contemporary data. The aim of the paper is to describe reproductive behavior from the end of the 18th century to 1860s using alternative analytical methods – above all the survival analysis. Survival analysis is an analytical tool contemporary used and very popular everywhere, where the time durations are the subject of study. The respond variable of interest is the time until a studied event occurred. In accordance to the aim of the paper, demographic events and their timing will be studied separately for groups of cohorts (birth- and marriage-cohorts) and changes in timing will be described not only from period point of view (comparison in time) but also from the cohort one. Data came from individual records from parish registers from Jablonec. Jablonec was a village in the northern part of the Czech lands typical for the manufacture of glass products in the second half of the 18th century, promoted to the township in 1808. Jablonec was one of the industrial townships in that time, manufacture of textile products developed there in the first half of the 19th century. The studied time period was very special thanks to the significant economic growth of the area and improvements of financial and social situation of the families or society in general. In the paper above all the time durations from birth to marriage or from marriage to the birth of the first child will be studied so as the family behavior could be described fully.