Alice Reid & Romola Davenport
The world’s population has exploded since the 18th century, from perhaps 1 billion in 1800 to over 8 billion today. The usual story is that this extraordinary growth was caused by dramatic falls in mortality. But research at Campop has shown that, at least in England, fertility has actually played a larger role than mortality in regulating population growth.
Romola Davenport
‘Malthusianism’ is widely used to describe the belief that (1) human populations grow faster than the resources on which they depend, and (2) that the main way in which population is prevented from outstripping resources is by the ‘positive check’ of mortality, resulting in the most extreme circumstances in ‘Malthusian crises’ (famine and war).
Alice Reid
Both my grandmothers lost children during or shortly after birth, and laid at least some of the blame on their care during that period. My maternal grandmother, a trained midwife, was worried about being allowed to go well beyond her due date less than two years after a previous caesarean birth. When she finally went into labour the doctor delayed his attendance because he was reluctant to leave his game of bridge, and the baby was stillborn. My paternal grandmother blamed a bombing raid for precipitating early labour, and her baby only lived three days. As a premature infant the baby would have been very vulnerable, but my grandmother felt she would have lived had the midwife not insisted on bathing her so frequently.
Richard Smith
It is commonplace to assume that, traditionally, care for older adults has been the responsibility of family members, and was provided within the extended family – implying that elderly persons spent their declining years under the same roof as their married children. But work at Campop has shown that this residential arrangement was not actually the norm in the British past.
Alice Reid
A previous blog charted trends in non-marital conceptions and births in England from 1550 to the present. It argued that although many couples engaged in sexual intercourse before marriage, in most cases when a woman fell pregnant she and her partner married swiftly, so that the majority of extra-marital conceptions were born within marriage. Not all pregnant women were able to marry however, giving rise to extra-marital births, or ‘illegitimate’ children.
Hannaliis Jaadla, Alice Reid, & Eilidh Garrett
Concerns about low and declining fertility are common in the media and feature in public discussions around much of Europe and South East Asia. The size of the future work force and the sustainability of pension systems in years to come both depend on the number of children born today. In England and Wales, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) fell to 1.49 children per woman in 2022, and 2023 was the first year in nearly half a century – and only the second in the last 250 years – when there were fewer births than deaths.
Alice Reid
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died on 8th September 2022. Aged 96, her death certificate gave her cause of death as simply ‘Old Age’. It’s undeniable that she was old when she died, but how common is old age as a cause of death now and in the past, and what can the history of death from old age tell us?
Richard Smith
Today those aged 60 and over make up slightly more than 1 in 5 of the UK population. It is tempting to believe that in the distant past, because there were fewer older people, they enjoyed a greater cachet. But how far is this view born out in the English case by the findings of historical demography? Is it correct to regard age structures over the deeper past as unvarying through time?
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The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure