Decrease in mortality in inner Spain’s territories: Albacete y Ciudad Real, 1700-1895

Abstract

During the 18th century and the first two thirds of the 19th, some of Spain’s inland provinces, such as Avila and Guadalajara, were not completely exempt from the fall in the death rate which was a defining characteristic of the first phase of the demographic transition in Europe. Did something similar occur in other inland areas characterized by higher levels of inequality? This article aims to clear up this doubt through an analysis of the provinces of Albacete and Ciudad Real. We have used the deaths/baptisms ratio as a proxy of gross death rate. The path of this indicator suggests that the birth rate also tended to show a long term decline in Albacete and Ciudad Real from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, although this fall was halted through a noticeable regression of this variable between and its recovery in the period 1865-1889.