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3.  Socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural propensities and their regional variants

Co-residence patterns, like many other demographic phenomena, can be influenced by economic, institutional, environmental, and cultural factors (Winch 1977, ch. 6; Rudolph 1992). The scope and content of modern censuses normally allow us to measure the relative strength of the latter’s associations with family system characteristics, as many covariates can easily be derived from information contained in the data themselves. The introduction of questions about language, ethnicity, literacy, and confession into modern census schedules has enormously broadened the number of variables which could be used to predict or explain particular demographic and family circumstances (Kertzer and Arel 2002). In many areas of Europe in the 19th century, national statistical offices produced a deluge of data, including extraordinarily detailed small area demographic, social, and economic statistical publications which allowed researchers to link macro- and microdata for the multi-level analysis of population processes and patterns (e.g., Woods and Hinde 1985; see also Szołtysek et al. 2014).

In our case, however, we were forced to cope with severe source material limitations. The information provided by the assembled listings does not, as a general rule, go beyond the basic demographic characteristics and relationship pointers of individuals, which decisively limits possibilities for measuring the associations between individual residential situation and other factors, be it occupational status, landownership or, most crucially, the type of legal and economic bonds to the landowning elite. The lack of meaningful country-wide...