This project studies the demographic and family history of the populace of a particular Spanish village to illuminate the phenomemon of late marriage in 20th-century Spain and to study the changes in Spanish kinship and family that are accompanying migration of peasantries to places of urban-industrial employment. For the study of late marriage, the project utilizes vital registry and household census to reconstruct the family history of villagers born in the past 110 years. Preliminary analysis of these data show that age at first marriage rose for both sexes to an average above 30 years, but differentially for individuals according to whether and which of their parents had died by the time they approached adulthood. A major goal is to explore this and other factors of family composition as possible causes of late marriage in a conjugal family system. The project will also explore how inheritance and other relations of property and class affected age at marriage, and whether late marriage came about through the influences of endogamy, emigration, class, and other factors on marital choices. Finally, the project will study how late marriage affected fertility in this populace. To study kinship change, in addition to reconstructing changes in family from registry and census records, the project will conduct interviews with resident and migrant villagers of various birth cohorts to determine shifts in the meaning individuals attribute to kinship and family patterns and explanations of the changes in these that they are aware of. The project will lay particular emphasis on the changes since 1965, when the populace began to migrate in large numbers away from a former peasant livelihood to urban-industrial wage work. The study contributes to scientific knowledge in the fields of demography and anthropology. Late marriage once was prevalent throughout Western Europe and is considered to have been distinctive and important as a factor in the early declines of European fertility. The causes and demographic consequences of late marriage thus are important to explore to explain the European demographic transition. Understanding change, and how individuals interpret the meaning of change in kinship and family and related aspects every-day life is an important challenge to anthropological theory concerning change.
