Old people in Polish cities in the late eighteenth century

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12447366
AutoresCezary Kuklo (0000-0002-6068-4278, Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen23
Número3
Páginas446-465
Fecha de publicación2018-07-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe History of the Family (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1081-602X • E-ISSN: 1873-5398
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1081602x.2018.1474786
OpenAlexW2883674610
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas16

The issue of old age as a period in life of a person in the cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was not widely discussed in historic literature of the past. This was due, to a large extent, to the beliefs of the researchers regarding the difficulty in capturing this phenomenon in light of rather Modest statistical sources. This study is, therefore, an attempt to scrutinise the mechanisms behind the functioning of city communities in the territories of central Poland in the late-feudal age on a basic level - the level of the smallest social unit and its economic base, i.e. the household, based on handwritten civil-military censuses from 1791-1792. The author is interested in the living situation of old people, their sizes and gender proportions in cities varying in size: from small to large ones in the second half of the 18th century. The article presents the dependencies between the age and position of men and women in the household and the proportions of old people being heads of households. Using the typology by Peter Laslett a model of a household ran by old people was shown against the background of a general structure of households in cities. The last part of the text concerns the size of households ran by old people, taking into account the social status, and their position within the family. The analysis of the censuses does not allow to determine any clear difference of living through old age in Polish cities in the 18th century in comparison to the regions which are attributed a ’unique’ model of European forms of family. The structural similarity of old age seen in Polish cities is closer to the model observed in cities of western than of eastern Europe

Census · Commonwealth · Demographic economics · Economics · Geography · Lithuanian · Period (music · Population · Position (finance · Sociology · Typology · Unit (ring theory · Central European Literary Studies · Demography · Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland · History · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies · Psychology