Fertility Patterns and Reproductive Behaviours in the Lutheran and Catholic Populations from Historical Poland

Many variables of biological, ecological and cultural nature affect the biological dynamics of human populations. A religious denomination was an element of the cultural system which had an impact on the attitude towards birth control and sexuality. The aim of this paper is to show how religion shaped the fertility figures in the Catholic and Lutheran populations of historical Poland. Two methods were used to characterize fertility. One uses reconstructed individual histories of families to assess fertility figures on the basis of the length of protogenetic and intergenetic intervals. In the second method fertility measures were estimated from mortality and natural increase data. Using life-table parameters estimated for both stationary and stable population models the following fertility figures were calculated: crude birth rate, net reproductive rate R0, mean family size, mean birth interval, total fertility rate, and mean age-specific fertility rate. It has been found that the analyzed Catholic and Protestant populations from the territory of historical Poland were characterized by a rather high reproductive potential.