Francesco Scalone

Becoming American: Intermarriage during the Great Migration to the United States

Although intermarriage is a common indicator of immigrant integration into host societies, most research has focused on how individual characteristics determine intermarriage. This study uses the 1910 ipums census sample to analyze how contextual factors affected intermarriage among European immigrants in the United States. Newly available, complete-count census microdata permit the construction of contextual measures at a much lower level of aggregation—the county—in this analysis than in previous studies. Our results confirm most findings in previous research relating to individual-level variables but also find important associations between contextual factors and marital outcomes. The relative size and sex ratio of an origin group, ethnic diversity, the share of the native-born white population, and the proportion of life that immigrants spent in the United State are all associated with exogamy. These patterns are highly similar across genders and immigrant generations.

The Onset of fertility transition in Italy, 1800-1900

This paper constitutes one of the first steps of a research project on the evolution of reproductive behaviour analyzed at the individual and household level. The core of the project is a re-examination of the theory of the demographic transition in Italy from the last decades of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. This paper presents the first comparative results over a period spanning from 1820 to the end of the nineteenth century, and it is focused on the reproductive behaviour of married women in their own families. In this period, the elements of the subsequent fertility transition can be barely detected at a general level, however it is possible to create a clear picture of the existing differentials in fertility outcomes in a period in which important social and economic transformations were taking place. In fact, we e consider it extremely useful to better highlight the levels of fertility which were found in many different geographical settings of Italy before the onset of the fertility transition. This issue is of great importance to our understanding of not only fertility behaviour before the transition but also of the fertility decline as such. Geographical differentials, such as those related to different social groups with varying socio economic status, diffusion of urban habits and domestic economies, were the basic elements on which the demographic transition would take place.