Urban demographic stagnation in early modern Germany: A simulation

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 581-612

  McIntosh, Terence ^a  

^a The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 4644260087     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/00221950151115098     Document Type: Article

References (138)

1. Despite methodological weaknesses and occasional errors, Günther Franz, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk: Untersuchungen zur Bevölkerungs- und Agrargeschichte (Stuttgart, 1979; 4th ed.), 5-59,
2. still provides the best estimates of the demographic losses. Concerning the scholarly controversy over these estimates, see John Theibault, "The Demography of the Thirty Years' War Re-revisited: Günther Franz and His Critics," German History, XV (1997), 3-13.
3. Franz's discussion of the recovery after the war (Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, 59-103) has little depth and reflects his strong Nazi sympathies. On the relationship between Franz's political and professional activities during the Third Reich and his various publications on the Thirty Years' War, see Wolfgang Behringer, "Von Krieg zu Krieg. Neue Perspektiven auf das Buch von Günther Franz Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk (1940)," in Benigna von Krusenstjern and Hans Medick (eds.), Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe: Der Dreißigjährige Krieg aus der Nähe (Göttingen, 1999), 543-591;
4. Wolfgang Behringer, "idem, "Bauern-Franz und Rassen-Günther: Die politische Geschichte des Agrarhistorikers Günther Franz (1902-1992)," in Winfried Schulze and Otto Gerhard Oexle (eds.), Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), 114-141.
5. On the demographic recovery after 1648, see Christian Pfister, Bevölkerungsgeschichte und historische Demographie, 1500-1800 (Munich, 1994), 77-79;
6. Christof Dipper, Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1789 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 43-59.
7. Throughout this article, the term "simulation" designates an array of computer programs and related calculations used to track population growth and the dissolution of marriages under certain assumptions about nuptiality, fertility, and mortality. These programs and calculations merely simulate "demographic accounting relations" and have no affinity with demographic micro-simulations of fertility, family structures, and kinship links. For a similar use of the term, see David Weir, "Rather Never Than Late: Celibacy and Age at Marriage in English Cohort Fertility, 1541-1871," Journal of Family History, IX (1984), 343.
8. Johann Peter Süssmilch, Die göttliche Ordnung in den Veränderungen des menschlichen Geschlechts, aus der Geburt, Tod, und Fortpflantzung desselben (Berlin, 1741), 52-67. Throughout the present article, the terms "towns" and "small towns" refer to urban communities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants; "cities" refers to urban communities with at least 10,000 inhabitants.
9. Allan Sharlin, "Natural Decrease in Early Modern Cities: A Reconsideration," Past & Present, 79 (1978), 126-138.
10. Scholars have identified several fundamental problems with Sharlin's analysis. For the best discussion of this matter, see Jan de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 175-198.
11. Sharlin, "Natural Decrease," 128.
12. Concerning the mathematical formula for the net reproduction rate, see Henry S. Shryock and Jacob S. Siegel, The Methods and Materials of Demography (Washington, D.C., 1980), II, 525.
13. The unrecorded mortality is not the cohort's actual mortality but that which it would have experienced if it had lived in the town since birth. That infant and childhood deaths represented the largest fraction of deaths in early modern populations is well documented. For data on the distribution of deaths among infants, children, and adults in German towns, see Christopher Friedrichs, Urban Society in an Age of War: Nördlingen, 1580-1720 (Princeton, 1979), 306-311;
14. Arthur E. Imhof, Die gewonnenen Jahre: Von der Zunahme unserer Lebensspanne seit dreihundert Jahren oder von der Notwendigkeit einer neuen Einstellung zu Leben und Sterben. Ein historischer Essay (Munich, 1981), 90-91;
15. Konrad Otto Roller, Die Einwohnerschaft der Stadt Durlach im 18. Jahrhundert in ihren wirtschaftlichen und kulturgeschichtlichen Verhältnissen dargestellt aus ihren Stammtafeln (Karlsruhe, 1907), 102-103;
16. Thomas Wolf, Reichsstädte in Kriegszeiten: Untersuchungen zur Verfassungs-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte von Isny, Lindau, Memmingen und Ravensburg im 17. Jahrhundert (Memmingen, 1991), 13;
17. Egon Schraitle, "Die Bevölkerungsentwicklung Esslingens in der Spätzeit der Reichsstadt," Esslinger Studien, X (1964), 100-103.
18. See also Michael W. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 1500-1820 (Baltimore, 1981), 16-17, 93-93;
19. e siècle," Annales de démographie historique (1978), 141-142.
20. For an analogous formulation of my argument, see de Vries' brief discussion of St. Petersburg, Florida, an American retirement community (European Urbanization, 181).
21. Roller, Die Eimvohnerschaft, 160;
22. Friedrichs, Urban Society, 65;
23. Hans-Rudolf Burri, Die Bevölkerung Luzerns im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert. Demographie und Schichtung einer Schweizer Stadt im Ancien Régime (Luzern, 1975), 85-86;
24. McIntosh, Urban Decline in Early Modern Germany: Schwäbisch Hall and Its Region, 1650-1750 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 141;
25. François, Koblenz im 18. Jahrhundert. Zur Sozial- und Bevölkerungsstruktur einer deutschen Residenzstadt (Göttingen, 1982), 43-46. The evidence for Durlach, Nördlingen, and Schwäbisch Hall is indirect because non-native brides did not necessarily remain in the town. In Schwäbisch Hall, 58 % of the non-native brides established their household elsewhere (McIntosh, Urban Decline, 142). This objection does not apply to the evidence for Luzern and Koblenz. Emigration complicates the problem further. After reaching adolesence, many females migrated from the small towns where they were born and bore children elsewhere. Hence, there is a birth cohort of unknown size consisting of small-town females, some of whom died before reaching adolescence and the remainder of whom emigrated. The native-born emigrant cohort's mortality is fully recorded until the age of departure, but the subsequent mortality and reproductive experiences are unrecorded. The degree to which this recorded mortality offsets the unrecorded mortality of the foreign-born migrants defies calculation. This analytical complication only underscores the need to measure the NRR by a procedure not affected by migration.
26. For other attempts to measure NRRS, see David Levine, "The Demographic Implications of Rural Industrialization: A Family Reconstitution Study of Shepshed, Leicestershire, 1600-1851," Social History, II (1976), 192-196;
27. David Levine, idem, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977), 73-76;
28. e siècle. Déficit démographique et immigration dans une ville de residence," Annales de démographie historique (1975), 298-304;
29. François, idem, Koblenz, 26-28;
30. Alfred Perrenoud, "Croissance ou déclin? Les mécanismes du non-renouvellement des populations urbaines," Histoire, économie et société, I (1982), 581-601;
31. e siècle," Population, XXX (1975), 221-243.
32. The exact formula for the GRR is given in Shryock and Siegel, Methods and Materials, II, 524-525.
33. For the mean age of maternity, or childbearing, see Shryock and Siegel, Methods and Materials, ibid., II, 473.
34. On the equation NRR = p(m̄) · GRR, see Edward Anthony Wrigley and Roger S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1989), 236-237.
35. Divorce and abandonment accounted for only 2 % of the 1,704 terminations (Roller, Die Einwohnerschaft, Apendix, 100-107).
36. 20.
37. John Knodel, Demographic Behavior in the Past: A Study of Fourteen German Village Populations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1988), 45, 47-49, 52, 53-60, 68, 545-549;
38. Roller, Die Eimvohnerschaft, Appendix, 46-50, 74-76;
39. Burri, Die Bevölkerung Luzens, 135-138;
40. Herms Bahl, Ansbach. Strukturanalyse einer Residenz vom Ende des Dreißigjährigen Krieges bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts: Verfassung, Verwaltung, Bevölkerung und Wirtschaft (Ansbach, 1974), 191 n. 8;
41. François, "La mortalité urbaine," 137-138 (for Offenburg, 1751-1800; Landsberg am Lech, 1731-1800; and Memmingen, 1747-1800);
42. Friedrichs, Urban Society, 303-305, 307-308, 310-311;
43. Jürgen Schlumbohm, Lebensläufe, Familien, Höfe: Die Bauern und Heuerleute des Osnabrückischen Kirchspiels Behn in protoindustrieller Zeit, 1650-1860 (Göttingen, 1994), 187-188;
44. Medick, Weben und Überleben in Laichingen 1650-1900: Lokalgeschichte als allgemeine Geschichte (Göttingen, 1996), 360-366, 372;
45. Pfister, Bevölkerungsgeschichte, 35-36.
46. The level 5 North model life table in Table 3, which neatly fits Durlach's observed marriage-duration distribution from 1701 to 1750, has an average male-female infant mortality rate of 243 per thousand, which closely matches the rate of 238 per thousand observed in Durlach (Ansley Coale and Paul Demecny, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations [New York, 1983; 2d. ed.], 158;
47. Roller, Die Einwohnerschaft, Appendix, 46-50, 74-76).
48. But this close match is purely coincidental. The level 3 East model life table in Table 3, which also neatly fits Durlach's observed marriage-duration distribution, has an average male-female infant mortality rate of 395 per thousand (Coale and Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables, 271).
49. The basis for the assumption in the first life table is that in the very small town of Oppenheim from 1721 to 1770, the infant-mortality rate was 226 per 1,000, and the infant-and-child-mortality rate was 476 per 1,000. These rates are weighted averages of the decennial rates in Peter Zschunke, Konfession und Alltag in Oppenheim: Beiträge zur Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Gesellschaft einer gemischtkonfessionellen Kleinstadt in der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1984), 165.
50. In Durlach from 1701 to 1750, the infant-mortality rate was 238 per 1,000, and the infant-and-child-mortality rate was 458 per 1,000 (calculated from data in Roller, Die Einwohnerschaft, Appendix, 46-55, 74-70).
51. The basis for the assumption in the second life table is that in the proto-industrial village of Laichingen, the infant-mortality rate averaged 426 per 1,000 for the years 1790-1799 and 1820-1869. During the same period, 555 per 1,000 newborns died before reaching age ten (calculated from data in Medick, Weben, 356).
52. x) at the beginning of each successive age interval after age ten.
53. Flinn, "The Stabilisation of Mortality in Pre-industrial Europe," Journal of European Economic History, III (1974), 285-318;
54. Flinn, idem, "The Stabilisation of Mortality in Pre-industrial Europe," "Plague in Europe and the Mediterranean Countries, "Journal of European Economic History, VIII (1979), 131-148;
55. Flinn, idem, European Demographic System, 92-95;
56. e siècles," Population, XXXV (1980), 347-384;
57. e siècle (Paris, 1956), 155-157;
58. Thomas Henry Hollingsworth, The Demography of the British Peerage, supplement to Population Studies, XVIII (1964/65), 56-57;
59. Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, 234-236;
60. e siècles," Population, XXV [1970], 637-641).
61. e siècles (Paris, 1979), 98-105.
62. Knodel, Demographic Behavior, 53-60.
63. Reinhard Spree, "'Volksgesundheit' und Lebensbedingungen in Deutschland während des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts," Jahrbuch des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung, VII (1988), 82-83.
64. Concerning pauperism in South Germany, see Wolfgang von Hippel, "Bevölkerungsentwicklung und Wirtschaftsstruktur im Königreich Württemberg 1815/65: Überlegungen zum Pauperismusproblem in Südwestdeutschland," in Ulrich Engelhardt, Volker Sellin, and Horst Stuke (eds.), Soziale Bewegung und politische Verfassung: Beiträge zur Geschichte der modernen Welt (Stuttgart, 1976), 270-371.
65. The calculated increase in life expectancy accords well with the fact that, for the 1701-1750 and 1751-1780 marriage cohorts, the observed percentage of marriages lasting less than five years declined from 14 to 9%, and the observed percentage of marriages lasting between five and ten years declined from 16 to 10%. Conversely, the percentage of marriages lasting between thirty and forty years increased from 15 to 22% (Roller, Die Einwohnerschaft, Appendix, 100-107). For the 1751-1780 marriage cohort, the sum of the absolute differences and the sum of the squared differences (not reported) are, respectively, more than double and about four times the corresponding values for the 1701-1750 cohort. The poorer fit may reflect the inadequacy of using fixed model life tables to measure a changing level of mortality. For the 1781-1800 marriage cohort, the sum of the absolute differences and the sum of the squared differences (not reported) are, respectively, about one-third and two-thirds larger than the corresponding values for the 1701-1750 cohort.
66. Peter Kriedte, Medick, and Schlumbohm, "Proto-industrialization Revisited: Demography, Social Structure, and Modem Domestic Industry," Continuity and Change, VIII (1993), 225;
67. Peter Kriedte, Medick, and Schlumbohm, idem, "Sozialgeschichte in der Erweiterung - Proto-Industrialisierung in der Verengung? Demographie, Sozialstruktur, moderne Hausindustrie: eine Zwischenbilanz der Proto-Industrialisierungs-Forschung," Geschichte und Gesellschaft, XVIII (1992), 85;
68. Schlumbohm, Lebensläufe, 185-188;
69. Medick, Weben, 301.
70. Although Schlumbohm borrows terminology from Wrigley and Schofield (Population of England, 236-248, 450-453, 478-480), his systems of high and low pressure are less comprehensive than theirs.
71. For another perspective on German regional patterns in breastfeeding and infant mortality, see Imhof, Die verlorenen Welten: Alltagsbewältigung durch unsere Vorfahren - und weshalb wir uns heute so schwer damit tun (Munich, 1984), 106-12
72. (trans. Thomas Robisheaux as Lost Worlds: How Our European Ancestors Coped with Everyday Life and Why Life is So Hard Today [Charlottesville, 1996], 81-87);
73. Thomas Robisheaux as idem, "Unterschiedliche Säuglingssterblichkeit in Deutschland, 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert - Warum?" Zeitschrift für Bevölkerungswissenschaft, VII (1981), 366-379;
74. e siècle. Résultats de recherches, certitudes et hypothèses," Population et Famille, L/LI (1980), 149-151, 160-174.
75. Age-specific marital-fertility rates indicate the number of live births occurring in a year to a thousand married women in a specific age category, generally five-year age groups from fifteen to forty-nine (Shryock and Siegel, Methods and Materials, II, 477-478;
76. Flinn, European Demographic System, 3, 30-31).
77. These rates reasonably approximate the fertility experience of all women because pre-1750 illegitimacy rates were extremely low and stable (Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family [New York, 1977], 80-83;
78. Flinn, European Demographic System, 19, 81-83).
79. e siècle (vers 1600-1870): Étude de démographie historique [Paris, 1969], 197.)
80. Coale, "Age Patterns of Marriage," Population Studies, XXV (1971), 193-214.
81. The proportion of all births that are female (0.489) corresponds to the sex ratio at birth that Wrigley and Schofield used in estimating birth totals for the English population (Population History of England, 126-128). The mean age of childbearing in Meulan was 30.8 years; in Luzem, 31.4 years.
82. The data for the calculations come from Table 4, as well as from Lachiver, La population de Meulan, 140;
83. Burri, Die Bevölkerung Luzerns, 103.
84. The mean length of a generation is defined as the mean age of childbearing, which, in the case of the simulations, equals thirty.
85. Flinn, European Demographic System, 20, 34;
86. François, Koblenz, 28;
87. Lachiver, La population de Meulan, 150.
88. Dipper, Deutsche Geschichte, 43, 45-46, 53-59, discusses the acceleration and deceleration of population growth in several German territories.
89. In South Germany, the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the Spanish Succession affected the pace of recovery (Dipper, Deutsche Geschichte, ibid., 54;
90. Friedrichs, Urban Society, 48, 71, 293).
91. The calculations of the time required for the population to double assume that the mean length of a generation is thirty years.
92. Von Hippel, "Bevölkerung und Wirtschaft im Zeitalter des Dreissigjährigen Krieges: Das Beispiel Württemberg," Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, V (1978), 421;
93. Franz, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, 52;
94. Gebhard Mehring, "Wirtschaftliche Schäden durch den Dreißigjährigen Krieg im Herzogtum Württemberg," Württembergische Viertljahrshefte für Landesgeschichte, XXX (1921), 72;
95. Walter Troeltsch, Die Cahver Zeughandlungskompagnie und ihre Arbeiter. Studien zur Gewerbe- und Sozialgeschichte Altwürttembergs (Jena, 1897), 394-404;
96. McIntosh, Urban Decline, 2-3, 38-40;
97. Wolf, Reichsstädte, 11-23, 224.
98. For an account of the mixed fortunes of small Hessian towns after the Thirty Years' War, see Holger Graf, "Small Towns in Early Modern Gemrany: The Case of Hesse, 1500-1800," in Peter Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995), 196-205.
99. On the vigor of European urban growth after 1450, see de Vries, "Population," in Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (eds.), Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation (Leiden, 1994), 15;
100. Harry A. Miskimin, The Economy of Later Renaissance Europe, 1460-1600 (Cambridge, 1977), 24-28.
101. Concerning the likely increase in rural migration to German towns and cities after the late medieval demographic crisis, see Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, 1988), 41.
102. August Skalweit, Das Dorfhandwerk vor Aufhebung des Städtezwangs (Frankfurt am Main, n.d.), 11, 54, 67-68, 71, argued that the Stadtflucht occurred throughout the German territories because of the increasing competition between urban and rural artisans; he did not specifically consider South Germany's urban demographic stagnation.
103. Festering primarily in South Germany, however, the competition did, in fact, weaken the region's urban economies and contribute to the slowing of urban growth (McIntosh, Urban Decline, 79-103, 187-190).
104. On the difficulties of explaining how, as opposed to why, urban populations developed as they did, see de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815 (Cambridge, 1997), 71.
105. McIntosh, Urban Decline, 83-102, 165-177, 184-185;
106. Hermann Grees, "Die Bevölkerungsentwicklung in den Städten Oberschwabens (einschließlich Ulms) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wanderungsvorgänge," Ulm und Oberschwaben, XL/XLI (1973), 152-153, 156-157, 158-159;
107. Bahl, Ansbach, 182-188, 194-195;
108. de Vries, European Urbanization, 220-221, 238-240, 244-246.
109. The argument in the text differs from that proposed by Friedrichs (Urban Society, 53-64)
110. and affirmed by Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees (The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1930 [Cambridge, Mass., 1985], 91-92).
111. Regarding the complex changes in migration to Augsburg, see François, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, 1648-1806 (Sigmaringen, 1991), 52-64.
112. De Vries and van der Woude have shown how, after the late seventeenth-century cessation of urban growth in Holland, changes in the composition of the migration stream adversely affected the ability of cities to reproduce themselves (First Modern Economy, 74-78).
113. Assuming a permanent celibacy rate of either 15 or 16 % and a female mean age at first marriage of about twenty-five, François estimated Koblenz's NRR at 0.85 or 0.84, respectively ("La population," 298-304;
114. idem, Koblenz, 26-28). He overlooked remarriage's contribution to the NRR, however. Correcting for this omission would generate results much closer to those in Table 5.
115. The simulations assume that a widow's probability of remarriage equals the probability of marriage for a spinster of the same age (see the third section of the Appendix). Coale suggested that male mortality in early modern Europe reduced fertility by about 10 % and that about half this loss was recovered by remarriage, leaving a net loss of only 5 % ("Introduction," in Dupâquier et al. [eds.], Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past [London, 1981], 156).
116. Henri Leridon estimated that only 20 % of the lost fertility from male and female mortality was recovered by remarriage ("Effets du veuvage et du remariage sur la fécondité. Résultat d'un modèle de simulation," in Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past [ibid., 611-613).
117. Houdaille estimated from reconstitution studies that it was 15 to 30 % ("Les enfants issus des remariages de femmes de 1670 à 1789," in Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past [ibid., 578-579).
118. David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven, 1985), 56-57, 64, 73-78;
119. Peter Stabel, Dwarfs among Giants: The Flemish Urban Network in the Late Middle Ages (Leuven, 1997), 19-43, 63-80, 137-173, 262-269;
120. Peter Stabel, idem, "Demography and Hierarchy: The Small Towns and the Urban Network in Sixteenth-Century Flanders," in Clark (ed.), Small Towns, 206-219;
121. de Vries and van der Woude, First Modern Economy, 64-67.
122. For other patterns of urban decline that differed significantly from developments in southern Germany, see Lees and Hohenberg, "Urban Decline and Regional Economies: Brabant, Castile, and Lombardy, 1550-1750," Comparative Studies in Society and History, XXXI (1989), 439-461. In 1800, no South German city had as many inhabitants as either Augsburg or Nuremberg did in 1600.
123. After surveying relevant demographic evidence, Stabel concluded that Flemish small towns, in periods of stable mortality, produced some natural increase ("Demography and Hierarchy," 219-225,
124. 228), but he never justified this conclusion, which is far from self-evident. In a later publication, he explicitly decided not to tackle the issue (Dwarfs among Giants, 116-127).
125. De Vries, European Urbanization, 70, 72, 202-203. The adjustment for the period from 1700 to 1750 rests on two assumptions: first, that the fifty-six towns that entered the size category of 5,000 to 9,999 inhabitants during this period had 3,000 residents initially; second, that the towns in this category did not suffer a birth deficit but had a NRR of unity. In other words, although these towns did not shrink because of the law of natural decrease, they grew only through migration. English and Welsh towns should arguably be removed from the calculations, since their demographic experiences differed fundamentally from those of towns on the Continent.
126. See De Vries, European Urbanization, ibid., 64 (Table 4.9);
127. Wrigley, "Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XV (1985), 710-712.
128. The size of the population living in northern European towns with 5,000 to 9,999 inhabitants increased by 49.1 % between 1750 and 1800 (de Vries, European Urbanization, 72). The concurrent improvement in life expectancy suggests that these towns may have enjoyed some natural increase, but it could never account for all of this growth by itself. Rural-to-urban migration continued to play a role.
129. Calculated from data in Roller, Die Einwohnerschaft, 179.
130. 3O Roller, Die Einwohnerschaft, Ibid., 166. Roller used ten-year age groups to tabulate the numbers marrying between ages fifty and seventy-nine. Dividing the respective numbers by two, the simulation created five-year age groups.
131. Coale, "Age Patterns," 203. The Coale standard schedule of first-marriage frequencies does not give an exact number of marriages per 1,000 women that occurs in any given year. Instead, the schedule shows the frequency of marriages at intervals of 0.1 years. To obtain the exact number of marriages, which served as the numerator in the calculations of marriage risk, this study used the standard schedule of the proportion of women who married, subtracting the proportion at 0.0 years from the proportion at 1.0 years, the proportion at 1.0 years from the proportion at 2.0 years, and so on. Division by five converted the five-year probabilities of dying that a life table provides into annual probabilities of dying.
132. The calculation of the mean age at first marriage used the data generated by the simulations on the number of marriages that occurred at each age.
133. To avoid unnecessary complication of the simulations, the women in Schwäbisch Hall who married between ages 15 and 19 also includes one woman who married at age 14.6.
134. The C parameter does not influence the composition of women who married with respect to age at marriage. When calculated by the procedure outlined in the text, the probability of marriage dissolution for the age interval forty-five to forty-nine reflects the likelihood that women between these ages will lose their husbands in the next five years. Since the GRR measures a cohort's reproductive experience only through age forty-nine, the simulation halved the calculated probability of marriage dissolution for this age interval.
135. Division by five converted the probabilities of marriage dissolution for five-year age groups into annual probabilities.
136. Using simulations, Leridon showed that an age-specific probability of remarriage equal to the age-specific probability of first marriage closely approximates the actual incidence of remarriage in early modern French villages ("Effets du veuvage" 608-611). Ceteris paribus, widows with children had less favorable prospects of finding a spouse than did spinsters of the same age. But widows tended to have more resources than women of the same age who never married, thus possibly offsetting the disadvantages of having children. See Weir, "Rather Never Than Late," 344.
137. Concerning the percentage of widows among female marriage partners in early modern German towns and cities, see McIntosh, Urban Decline, 149-150.
138. On spousal age differences in remarriages, see McIntosh, Urban Decline, 155-157.