Practice question · Multiple choice
Family reconstitution links baptisms, marriages and burials into individual life histories. Which group does the method systematically lose?
Hints
- The registers cover one parish. Ask what happens to someone who moves to the next one.
- You see a baptism and never a burial. What are the two possible explanations?
Show the answer
A. Migrants, who cannot be distinguished from the dead
Why
A person who leaves and a person who dies unrecorded look identical in one parish's books, so complete families are disproportionately sedentary ones. It biases the results toward stable rural populations, which is why reconstitution findings on fertility must be read alongside evidence about mobility.
Practise Demographic and Statistical History
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