Work, marriage, and childbearing trajectories in Derbyshire, 1881–1911

This paper uses linked census records from England and Wales starting in 1881 and the 1911 census fertility survey to perform sequence analysis on the fertility trajectories of three cohorts of women in the county of Derbyshire, England. The occupational structure of the county allows for comparison between the demographic regimes of textile manufacturing, mining, agricultural, and urbanizing environments. In addition to enabling the reconstruction of complete birth histories, the linked census data also retrieve information about women's occupations both before and after marriage. Childbearing sequences of marriage and birth events are grouped using cluster analysis to reveal how fertility patterns were correlated within the life course and cluster membership is modelled using multinomial logistic regression, focusing on fertility variation by both male and female occupational groups. The childbearing sequences are allocated into three clusters of High, Moderate, and Low fertility trajectories which illustrate the simultaneous adoption of both parity-specific fertility control and greater birth spacing in this period. Occupational gradients in fertility are analysed at the level of the individual and of the couple to reveal the effects of compositional differences in the rates of intermarriage within and between occupational groups. These interactions are important for explaining the high marital fertility of female domestic servants and male miners and the rapidly declining fertility of couples working in the textile industry.