"While all other European nations increased in population during the [nineteenth] century, the population of Ireland decreased at every census except one between 1841 and 1961; the number of persons living in Ireland in 1966 was less than half that of 1841. Of all Western European countries, Ireland has the greatest amount of postponed marriage and permanent celibacy, and yet it also has the highest marital fertility rate ... It is unsettling to social scientists to admit the existence of an apparent exception to so many well known and widely accepted theories concerning population growth, urbanization, emigration, age and marriage, and family size. The aim of this book is to distinguish some of the more interesting elements of Irish life which are indeed peculiar to Ireland from those which Ireland shares, to a greater or lesser degree, with other countries"-- page [1].
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 226-231).
Contents
Basic issues and interpretations -- Conditions in nineteenth-century Ireland -- Mortality and relative living standards -- Female emigration and the movement from rural to urban areas -- Emigration and agricultural labor-saving techniques -- Nationalism and Protestant emigration -- Postponed marriage and permanent celibacy -- High marital fertility -- The interrelationship of historical trends.