Investigating the late fertility transition in Sardinia with individual data on a long‐living population (Villagrande, 1851-2012)

How the survival of children may affect the fertility behaviour of their mother? More directly could the lost of a child increase the fertility of his/her mother. This question is important in the study of the impact of the reduction of infant mortality for the fertility transition. Sardinian population that experienced late fertility transition and high level of marital fertility until the 1950’s has been reported as an appropriate case to address this question. We select the village of Villagrande located at 700 meters above sea level in the province of Ogliastra with 3,441 inhabitants still involved in agro-pastoral activities and living and traditional life style still prevalent. Based on church and civil records we reconstruct 702 completed families with parents married between 1851 and 1955. Even if we observe that mothers losing one child have a lower over risk to have a new child during the transitional period compared to the period of natural fertility regime, the decrease of fertility is lower that what could be expected from the decrease in infant mortality. In fact the fertility level for mother without lost child increased in the first phase of the transition between 1931 and 1950 and started to decrease thereafter only.