Reconstructing lifespans through historical marriage records of barcelona from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

This chapter presents a methodology for reconstructing the lifespan of individuals through a nominal record linkage procedure using historical marriage records of Barcelona from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The data are extracted from the Barcelona Historical Marriage Database (BHMD), a unique source that contains information about more than 600,000 marriages celebrated in both urban and rural parishes of the Barcelona area from over 450 years (1451-1905). We discuss the main characteristics of the database, the standardisation of the nominal information, the marriage linkage procedure and the reconstruction of the lifespans. Finally, we briefly introduce an application of Bayesian models to study adult mortality on the basis of the reconstructed lifespans.