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I n 2004 the population of the Republic of Ireland was in excess of four million for the first time since 1871.1 The population of the island of Ireland is now at approximately the same figure as in the mid-1860s. Ireland2 is the only country in the developed world whose population is below the level of the mid-nineteenth century and the only country where reports on the census returns draw comparisons with figures from more than a century ago.3 However, the current rate of population growth in Ireland, north and south, is significantly greater than elsewhere in Europe, and the average age of the population is well below that of the European Union. Between 1996 and 2002 the population of Ireland rose by 4 percent to 3,917,336; in 2001 the population of Northern Ireland was 1,685,267, an increase of 5 percent since 1995.4 Over the past ten years the population of every Irish county has increased; in some counties, such as Leitrim, this was the first recorded increase in the population 3 1 The Pathology of Irish Demographic History since the famine. Annual immigration averaged 25,500 during the years 1996 –2002; a record 66,900 immigrated in 2000. Of the estimated 50,000 who immigrated in 2003, only one-third are returning immigrants; for the first time in almost three hundred years, a sizeable number of foreigners are settling in Ireland.5 The current picture of a rising population and substantial net immigration is a direct consequence of Ireland’s economic prosperity. Between 1851 and 1961, every census recorded a fall in the population in the area that constitutes the Republic of Ireland (with the exception of the years 1946 –51, when the population rose by 5,000). By 1961 the population was 10 percent below the 1911 figure, and probably lower than in 1800.6 The long-term decline in population ended in the 1960s, and since then every census with the exception of 1986 has shown a rise in population.7 Liam Kennedy, writing in 1994, noted that “Irish population history is very different from that of other western societies, and therein lies its fascination.”8 The distinctive features of Ireland’s population history include not only the long-term population decline but also emigration persisting over many decades, a low rate of marriage and late age of marriage, high marital fertility, and a very late transition to smaller families. Large families, few job opportunities for teenagers and women, and the high rate of emigration among young adults resulted in a high dependency ratio that reduced Irish living standards.9 Although no other European country experienced a catastrophe of the order of the great famine, other countries and regions in Europe did experience many of the same aspects of the late-nineteenthcentury Irish population story—heavy emigration, late marriages, a high rate of permanent celibacy, and a declining rural population. But until recently, very few accounts of Irish emigration have noted, for example, that Britain was also a country of emigrants or that Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and Italy experienced a significant volume of emigration at some stage during the nineteenth century .10 In the preface to his 1997 book, The Vanishing Irish, which deals with population change in rural Ireland from 1850 to 1914, Tim Guinnane remarked that “some aspects of Irish depopulation were unusual but . . . the basic forces leading to depopulation were similar to those at work all across Europe in the late nineteenth century.”11 4 The Pathology of Irish Demographic History Guinnane pointed out that by the late nineteenth century some areas in Portugal, Austria, and Germany had celibacy rates that were comparable to, or even higher than, Ireland’s. In 1911 marital fertility in parts of Bavaria was comparable to the level in Ireland, and there was substantial rural depopulation in New England, Scotland, and England .12 Refuting the crude argument that Catholicism deterred men and women from marrying, Guinnane noted the high marriage rate in Quebec, a strongly Catholic province. It is now increasingly recognized that the Irish were not alone in resorting to sexual abstinence and celibacy in order to control fertility.13 The peculiarity of Ireland’s population history has undoubtedly been overstated, but in making this point, it is important not to go to the other extreme of denying what was unique. Ireland’s demographic profile is no longer exceptional. With a net reproduction rate below replacement...

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