Intensity of the agricultural workload and seasonality of births in Italy (1863-2014)

Gabriele Ruiu, Università degli Studi di Sassari
Marco Breschi, Università degli Studi di Sassari

The research questions of this paper can be formulated as follows: can agricultural work intensity affect birth seasonality? Does this relation vanish with the decline of the workforce employed in agriculture? To answer to these questions, we used data coming from the Volumes “Movimento dello Stato Civile” to recursively regress the monthly births on an indicator of the agricultural workload intensity for each Italian Regions. The period under the lent of investigation spans from national unification to the present (1863-2014). Preliminary results suggest that the relation between agricultural workload intensity and birth seasonality vanishes in the aftermath of the First World War.