Regional analysis of the fecondity fall in Portuguese population (1930-1970)

Abstract

Portugal not only belongs to the group of the less developed countries in Europe but also presents a very particular aspect that seems to have given it certain specific features: its geographical isolation, reinforced by a lot of economic, social, cultural and political factors, in a certain extent connected with the political regime that was in force during 48 years. This isolation deeply underestimated the troubling effects of the variables exogenous as to the Portuguese socio-cultural system. Thus the study of the causes associated with the different levels and speeds in the fecondity fall offers the possibility of determining, almost in their «pure state», those variables as to the system that may be in the source of the fecondity evolution. But, before one may proceed to the study of the socio-demographic causes linked up with the fall of this phenomenon in Portugal, it is necessary to solve a certain number of problems: that is what is intended by this article. Thus the main targets of the present text are as follows: 1) the choice of an analysis period, after having defined the moment when the fecondity fall began effectively in Portugal; 2) the choice of a criterium for the regionalization, through the variance analysis; 3) the analysis of the quality evolution of the statistics concerning the civil state and the population census, within the considered period of analysis; 4) the determination of measures expressing the level and the speed of the regional fecondity fall. In the last part one says that the explanation for the decline fall should be later conducted according to two ways: one must analyse the moment of the phenomenon production; the other must analyse the modalities through which its reproduction is ensured. In this second way it will be necessary to study fecondity as a habitus, i.e. as Bourdieu and Passeron put it, as «a lasting interiorization of cultural principles through concrete gestures».