Kin and birth order effects on male child mortality: three East Asian populations, 1716-1945.

Human child survival depends on adult investment, typically from parents. However, in spite of recent research advances on kin influence and birth order effects on human infant and child mortality, studies that directly examine the interaction of kin context and birth order on sibling differences in child mortality are still rare. Our study supplements this literature with new findings from large-scale individual-level panel data for three East Asian historical populations from northeast China (1789-1909), northeast Japan (1716-1870), and north Taiwan (1906-1945), where preference for sons and first-borns is common. We examine and compare male child mortality risks by presence/absence of co-resident parents, grandparents, and other kin, as well as their interaction effects with birth order. We apply discrete-time event-history analysis on over 172,000 observations of 69,125 boys aged 1-9 years old. We find that in all three populations, while the presence of parents is important for child survival, it is more beneficial to first/early-borns than to later-borns. Effects of other co-resident kin are however null or inconsistent between populations. Our findings underscore the importance of birth order in understanding how differential parental investment may produce child survival differentials between siblings.

New Sources for Comparative Social Science: Historical Population Panel Data From East Asia.

Comparison and comparability lie at the heart of any comparative social science. Still, precise comparison is virtually impossible without using similar methods and similar data. In recent decades, social demographers, historians, and economic historians have compiled and made available a large number of micro-level data sets of historical populations for North America and Europe. Studies using these data have already made important contributions to many academic disciplines. In a similar spirit, we introduce five new micro-level historical panel data sets from East Asia, including the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset-Liaoning (CMGPD-LN) 1749-1909, the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset-Shuangcheng (CMGPD-SC) 1866-1913, the Japanese Ninbetsu-Aratame-Cho Population Register Database-Shimomoriya and Niita (NAC-SN) 1716-1870, the Korea Multi-Generational Panel Dataset-Tansung (KMGPD-TS) 1678-1888, and the Colonial Taiwan Household Registration Database (CTHRD) 1906-1945. These data sets in total contain more than 3.7 million linked observations of 610,000 individuals and are the first such Asian data to be made available online or by application. We discuss the key features and historical institutions that originally collected these data; the subsequent processes by which the data were reconstructed into individual-level panels; their particular data limitations and strengths; and their potential for comparative social scientific research.

Household Context and Individual Departure: The Case of Escape in Three 'Unfree' East Asian Populations, 1700-1900.

In the past, many people were 'unfree' in the sense that their movement was restricted, and out-migration without permission was regarded and recorded as 'escape.' Even though such escape was common in the past, historical studies mostly neglect this form of migration. This paper examines escape in historical East Asia, focusing on the influence of household context and individual characteristics on the chances of escape, taking advantage of large-scale individual panel datasets from three adjacent unfree populations from northeast China, southeast Korea and northeast Japan in the 18th and 19th century. We not only find similar temporal, spatial, and age patterns of escape, but also similar patterns of associations between chances of escape and household context. In particular, the presence of dependent children and elderly in the household makes individuals less likely to escape. Other patterns of association also highlight the importance of gender and social class. Despite significant differences in political, social, and community context across these three East Asian populations, our empirical comparisons suggest important commonalities in terms of motivation driven by shared understandings of obligation to others.

Divorce in early modern rural Japan: household and individual life course in northeastern villages, 1716-1870.

Drawing data from the local population registers in two northeastern agricultural villages, this study examines the patterns and factors associated with divorce in preindustrial Japan. Divorce was easy and common during this period. More than two thirds of first marriages dissolved in divorce before individuals reached age fifty. Discrete-time event history analysis is applied to demonstrate how economic condition and household context influenced the likelihood of divorce for females. Risk of divorce was extremely high in the first three years and among uxorilocal marriages. Propensity of divorce increased upon economic stress in the community and among households of lower social status. Presence of parents, siblings, and children had strong bearings on marriage to continue.