The history of mankind is characterized by a constant struggle to feed an increasing number of human beings. As a result, population growth has been very slow until well into the 19th century. Moderate levels of labor and soil productivity simply did not allow an increase comparable to that begun after the agricultural and industrial revolutions. The historically unknown growth of population and of the standard of living since then, however, was mainly limited to the western part of the world. For many regions in Asia and Africa the threat of hunger and starvation have remained a living reality until today. Pessimists even predict that at the global level the unbalanced growth of population and resources inevitably is heading towards disaster. One of the crucial issues in historical demography, if not in history, is the way societies in the past handled the constant threat of overpopulation.

We address this central issue too. Our approach, however, is not the analysis of developments and interactions of the dynamics determining the growth of population and production at the macro level. Rather, we focus on two towns and the individuals living in these towns. The background of this choice is easy to understand. Obviously, the development of the size of populations of nations or continents was not directed at the national or continental level. It was the result of conscious and unconscious decisions regarding marriage and fertility made by individual historical actors. The intellectual horizon of most of these actors was limited to circumstances in their own family, village, town or region. They had no idea of the macro effects of their behavior. Our knowledge of these individual decisions and the perceptions underlying them is still very limited. To be sure, the general growth of the number of inhabitants is known for most parts of the world, as are its economic, social and cultural covariates. Still, we have only begun to understand the mechanism that guided individual level actions to reach this macro level result.

When Thomas Malthus published the first edition of his Essay on Population in 1798, he distinguished two possible strategies for historical actors. The first was to limit population growth by marriage restriction. In western Europe, he stated, we find people in all layers of society who know what the consequences are of a young and reckless marriage.