APPENDIX
Statistical essay Giambattista Salinari and Paul Ginsborg
Introductory note In this appendix to Paul Ginsborg’s Family Politics we present a set of demographic and economic statistics relating to the five countries analysed in the book – the Soviet Union, Turkey, Italy, Spain and Germany – for the period 1900–50. The material is organised in five subsections, each of which is dedicated to a single country. The indices presented in these subsections cover the same subjects and follow (with a few exceptions) the same order, and may therefore be used not only to analyse the evolution over time of a particular phenomenon within a particular country, but also to draw comparisons between different countries in the same period. In this introductory note we briefly consider three aspects of the demographic history of these countries: demographic transition,1 demographic catastrophes and the politics of eugenics. The five countries analysed are seen to be at very different stages in the process of demographic transition during the period in question (see figure 1). The process typically begins with a decline in mortality, followed, around ten to twenty years later, by a decline in the birth rate. Because the decline in mortality precedes the decline in the birth rate, there are more births each year than deaths. As a consequence, the natural growth rate of populations becomes markedly positive, such that they begin to grow at speeds that have never been seen before and will probably never be seen again (see figure 2). Population growth is in fact one of the great phenomena of the period under consideration, together with its exact opposite, the destruction of human life brought about by an unprecedented sequence of world wars, civil wars and famines. Of the five countries analysed in the book, one, Turkey, still seems to be in a pre-transitional phase throughout the whole of the period examined (see figure 3): birth rates are still very high, between 45 and 55 per thousand, while levels of mortality are lower, between 30 and 40 per thousand, showing signs of rapid decline only from the 1940s. As a result, of the five countries analysed Turkey displays the fastest population growth. Germany, Italy and Spain, by contrast, are seen to be fully transitional: by 1 This term is generally used to refer to the long historical process that sees the high levels of mortality and birth typical of earlier societies gradually replaced by the low levels characteristic of most present-day populations.