State Views and Local Views of Population: Linking and Comparing Genealogies and Household Registers in Liaoning, 1749-1909

PWP-CCPR-2004-025

Abstract

To assess the consistency of recording in historical Chinese data, we compare the demography of the same families recorded in two separate sources: household registers and lineage genealogies. We find that these sources offer contradictory accounts. Reflecting differences between official and private constructions of kinship, individuals recorded in the household registers are often missing from the genealogies. We apply multivariate techniques to examine how the families that compiled genealogies differed from other families, and how the individuals recorded in genealogies differed from unrecorded members of the same family. We find that the families for which genealogies are available are highly selective in terms of their socioeconomic standing, and that there is additional selectivity in terms of which members were recorded. We also find that fertility estimates from genealogies may be biased upward, rather than downward, because genealogies are more likely to omit adults who have few or no offspring. We conclude by discussing the implications for interpretation of published findings from sources such as lineage genealogies and household registers that have been the mainstay of historical studies of Chinese kinship and demography.