The proposed research will exploit an extremely valuable data source to study fertility in the city of Munich between 1850 and 1914. Munich's police registration records (Polizeimeldebogen or PMBs) contain life-cycle histories of most individuals born in or who moved to Munich during this period. Examination of a small pilot sample from the PMBs documents their rich demographic information and rare data on migration histories, socioeconomic status, and wealth. The research project will collect a sample of suitable size to take full advantage of this source. We will then use the sample to test theories about the role of rural-urban migration, urbanization, and socioeconomic change in the European fertility transition. The sample will be also valuable for the study of infant and child mortality, migration per se, and other topics; we will make the sample public as soon as we have completed our own research. While historical demographers have undertaken many careful studies of the fertility transition in Europe, our research has two novel features that have the potential to fill several gaps in scholars' understanding of the European fertility transition. Few historical studies have been able to employ sources as rich as the PMBs; our data will support precise tests of often-discussed hypotheses about the role of migration, socioeconomic change, and urbanization in fertility decline. Ours is also the first individual-level study of fertility in an urban German population. Urbanization was particularly rapid in late nineteenth-century Germany; this and other distinctive features of German demographic and socioeconomic development make it an important instance in which to test general models formulated in other contexts.
| Atkinson, Charlotte; Lampe, Johanna W; Scholes, Delia et al. (2006) Lignan and isoflavone excretion in relation to uterine fibroids: a case-control study of young to middle-aged women in the United States. Am J Clin Nutr 84:587-93 |
| Atkinson, Charlotte; Skor, Heather E; Dawn Fitzgibbons, E et al. (2003) Urinary equol excretion in relation to 2-hydroxyestrone and 16alpha-hydroxyestrone concentrations: an observational study of young to middle-aged women. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol 86:71-7 |
| Atkinson, Charlotte; Skor, Heather E; Fitzgibbons, E Dawn et al. (2002) Overnight urinary isoflavone excretion in a population of women living in the United States, and its relationship to isoflavone intake. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 11:253-60 |
