BioHistory Seminar: "Demographic Avant-Garde: Determinants of Early Fertility and Mortality Transition among Jews in Bohemia between 18th and 20th Centuries"

Presentation by Jana Vobecká, Senior Researcher, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences.

Based on Vobecka’s book Demographic Avant-Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah, her presentation covers the transformation of fertility and mortality among the Jewish population of Bohemia (currently part of the Czech Republic) combining different data sources, such as vital statistics and census data. Vobecká provides a portrait of Bohemian Jews as forerunners in the process of demographic transition and discusses the factors that contributed to this behavioural shift.

Vobecka’s presentation shows unique demographic behaviour of Jews in Bohemia, starting from a moment in history when industrialization in Central Europe was far away in the future and when Jews were still living legally restricted lives in ghettos. Under conditions not stipulated by conventional demographic theories, Bohemian Jews started recording marked decreases in mortality and fertility that signalled an early onset of their demographic transition.

Vobecka uses available data of nearly two hundred years between the 18th and 20th century and shows what made Jews in Bohemia true forerunners of the demographic transition in Europe and why this occurred when it did. Her analysis of fertility and mortality transition is interpreted in a larger social-historical and international context.

About Jana Vobecká
Jana Vobecká holds a PhD in demography from the University of Burgundy in Dijon and Charles University in Prague. She is a researcher in the Czech Academy of Sciences and a Programme manager in International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) in Vienna. Her research focuses inter alia on spatial population dynamics and its effects on social inequalities, local governance, and historical demography. She has recently moved to Odense in Denmark.