Seasonality of birth rates in agricultural Iceland

• Published in: Scandinavian Economic History Review
• Main Authors: Björnsson, D.F., Zoega, Gylfi
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor and Francis 2017
• Subjects: Economics; Mathematics and Statistics; Iceland
• Online Access: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/19404/; https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/19404/1/19404.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1080/03585522.2017.1340333

The seasonal pattern of birth rates in nineteenth-century agricultural Iceland, peaking in late summer and early autumn, gradually disappeared when the population migrated to fishing villages in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. We describe how this pattern is consistent with changes that have occurred in other countries and discuss some possible causes.