Marriage, migration, and urban demographic structure: a case from France in the Belle Epoque.

Marriage is central to understanding historical populations and the family. Not only is marriage the event in the human life cycle which precipitates family formation, but also marriage patterns are the primary surface on which fertility levels are inscribed. Age at marriage and proportion married determine females’ exposure to risk of pregnancy. Since Hajnal demonstrated the primacy of nuptiality patterns to demographic behavior in the West (1953), marriage has been central to definitions of the Western family (Hajnal, 1965; Laslett, 1977). Moreover, nuptiality patterns respond to economic and social change. In the past few years, this has been demonstrated by Braun’s (1978) and Levine’s (1977) studies of proletarianization and by studies linking such factors as occupation, sex ratios (Haines, 1979) and economic crises (Wrigley, 1971:158-161) to nuptiality. Changes in marriage age and proportion married also have been accepted as part of Europe’s demographic transition along with changes in fertility and mortality (Tilly and Scott, 1978:91-96). Marriage may also be central to understanding the relatively low fertility and high mortality of the European city in history. Indeed, patterns of marriage among urban people may tell us more about urban population structure than such factors as urban family composition, which does not vary radically from place