Gabriel Brea-Martinez

Don't miss the opportunity to present your work at the leading conference on Demography in Spain! ADEH from September 3 to 5, in an unbeatable location, Málaga. Send your abstracts in either historical or contemporary demography by 11th May (extended) docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Lent has just begun! So why not learn more about marriages in Lent in the past?

Great teamwork with
@jpujadasmora.bsky.social and Prof. Anna Cabré, where we studied the determinants of marriage seasonality in the area of Barcelona in the long run!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The findings highlight the importance of understanding social mobility's impact on fertility, emphasizing the value of DRMs in historical research. Looking forward to further exploration in this area! 🔍

Our study uses Swedish data from 1905 to 2015, revealing a constant but small negative association between upward social mobility and fertility. This was especially noticeable in the oldest cohorts. 📊

Social mobility and fertility: Applying diagonal reference models in historical studies (Sweden, 1870–2015) Theoretically there are good reasons to expect social mobility to have an effect on fertility. The problem is how to assess such an effect empirically, as social mobility is a function of both soci...

Check out my latest article, coauthored with Martin Dribe! 📚: "Social mobility and fertility: Applying diagonal reference models in historical studies (Sweden, 1870–2015)"

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

8/8
Is the rise of social mobility tied to a decline in family influence? Our findings suggest otherwise. Kinship, particularly sibling ties, continued shaping social outcomes even during industrialization.

7/8
First-married sisters often played important roles in supporting siblings, even within rigid inheritance systems like Catalonia's single-heir system? Marrying "down" wasn’t always a disadvantage—it could also be strategic.

6/8
The influence wasn’t limited to brothers. First-married sisters also shaped their siblings' mobility, challenging ideas like women’s hypergamy.

5/8
First-married brothers (FM siblings) significantly influenced the SES of their siblings. This wasn’t about replacing parental roles but about new intragenerational cooperation.

4/8
Proto-industrialization! As societies transitioned, horizontal ties (siblings) increasingly supplemented or replaced vertical ties (parents). A sign of family cooperation, not loss of family influence.

3/8
Traditionally, parents were seen as the main influence on children’s socio-economic status. But from the 18th century, siblings—especially first-married brothers—began playing a larger role. What can explain this shift?👇

2/8
Research Insights:
Social mobility didn’t erase family influence; it restructured it.
Horizontal ties gained prominence, aligning with proto-industrial dynamics.

1/8
Our latest research deals with family influence on socio-economic outcomes in the Barcelona area (16th–19th centuries) using the Barcelona Historical Marriage Database (BHMD). We use unique data combining both occupational and economic information!

Towards more horizontality in families? Sibling associations in socio-economic status in the Barcelona area in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries This paper explores the shift in family influence on socio-economic outcomes, focusing on sibling relationships, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries in the Barcelona area. Our findings r...

Happy to see our research out! Together with @jpujadasmora.bsky.social
Check out below! 🧵
Full article: Towards more horizontality in families? Sibling associations in socio-economic status in the Barcelona area in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The CfP for the 6th Conference of the European Society of Historical Demography is out!

The conference will be held in Bologna from 10 to 13 September 2025.

The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2025!

eshd2025.eshd.eu

Interested in sharing and presenting your research in a high-quality academic environment? In an unbeatable location like Málaga? Submit your proposal to the 14th ADEH Conference, the leading conference for demography in the Iberian Peninsula! Deadline April 25th! adeh.org/wp-content/u...

Extrely good news and supper happy! Looking forward to collaborating with @ingridvandijk.bsky.social (our PI) and Luciana Quaranta in this amazing project!

The historical #fertility transition began with stopping, and then involved both stopping and spacing, with similar patterns across #social classes. Evidence from applying cure models to #microdata from Southern Sweden. New publication 👉https://www.demographic-research.org/articles/volume/51/40

Very grateful to Daniel Markovits for a brilliant presentation and discussion.