| Abstract: | Fertility responded negatively to grain insufficiency(proxied by grain price increases), and mortality respondedpositively in Croatia-Slavonia-Srem in the 18thand 19th centuries, as in most of Europe. Shiftsin the intensity and timing of these responsesoccurred over time as social and economic structureschanged. Shifts in the elasticity of fertility withrespect to grain supply inversely mimic and lagchanges in the elasticity of mortality. Both appear tobe induced by increasing land shortage, the collapseof feudalism, and differences in the patterns ofadjustment to post-feudal conditions among former civiland military serfs. Generally, responses are strongerfor civil and former civil serfs, who may have been inless favourable economic circumstances than themilitary. Fertility responses in the year of a priceshock come to dominate those in the year following,suggesting a shift from contraception to abortion aseconomic and social conditions apparently worsened andstrategies of control intensified. Analysis of monthlyresponses supports the conjecture based on the annualresponses. The shift to the preventive check and strength of thepreventive check in the same year as the price shockis unusual in Europe and beyond. Analysis is based on25 parishes and employs lagged annual and monthly timeseries analysis with corrections for autocorrelation,in combination with ethnographic and historical data. |
