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5.  Computer microsimulation and the study of historical living arrangements

In addition to synthetic cohorts, the use of which has a long tradition in historical studies of the family, the second cornerstone of this book’s methodology is a more recent innovation. While in the last 30 years or so it has been increasingly used in Western historical studies of social structure and family (Wachter et al. 1978; Ruggles 1987; Hammel 1990b; Devolder 2002), in the study of populations from Central and Eastern Europe it has not yet been employed. The innovation which is being referred to is computer microsimulation of kin sets.

For many years, family demographers and family historians have been aware of the need to use indirect methods to evaluate certain characteristics of families that cannot be accessed using most types of available data. For example, the data on household composition and living arrangements that could be derived from historical listings used in this study (see Ch. 2) describe fairly well and with a great deal of accuracy the actual residential circumstances of the family, as well as the living arrangements of various categories of individuals. However, one of the limitations of these data (on their other drawbacks, see Appendix 1, vol. 2) is that they do not provide a direct correspondence between the observable residential configurations and their nonobservable determinants (De Vos and Palloni 1989, 175). This point is a critical one, as at least since the early 1970s...