The Fertility Transition in the Area of Bologna: an Analysis based on Longitudinal Data. The Case of Granarolo from 1900 to 1940

The aim of the study is to highlight some key points of Italian fertility decline in the first decades of the twentieth century, by using a micro longitudinal approach. The research is based on new individual-longitudinal data and life-course histories from Granarolo, an Italian municipality bordering the town of Bologna. By using Cox models, hazards of having a child are estimated for married women between 1900 and 1940. Individual fertility propensity by marriage cohort and period is assessed, controlling for differences in socio-demographic characteristics and describing the changing reproductive strategies. Moving from one marriage cohort to the next one, the hazard of having a first child progressively increased. On the contrary, probabilities of giving birth progressively fell when women reached higher parities. Fertility continued to decrease even if the Fascist Regime promoted a pro-births campaign against fertility decline. Clear differences in fertility were also visible between socioeconomic groups: the lower fertility of upper classes is confirmed even in a rural community such as Granarolo, whereas sharecroppers’ families remained tied to their own traditional higher fertility.