Temporal perspective

Leader: Virpi Lummaa, Professor, University of Turku

Working package focuses on (i) quantifying the long-term changes in the structure of family networks, and provides knowledge on how these changes are associated with fertility and mortality outcomes (ii) over time and (iii) during quantifiable hardships such as famines, disease outbreaks and political conflicts (resilience).

These key questions can only be addressed with longitudinal historical family data. We use an unique Life history data gathered from church records and population registers in Finland 1731–2019. Combining them with modern computational tools of network science, we are able to characterise the family network available to each person in our over 100,000 person pedigree within the same village or municipality vs. further in Finland.

The following themes are addressed:

• Structures of kin networks across the demographic transition in Finland.
• Effects of changing network structures on fertility and mortality.
• The type of network structures providing fertility and mortality resilience during hardship.