ABSTRACT
Torrita di Siena, adjacent to the hilltop village of Montefollonico, confirms the baptismal discrepancies, and its larger size enables us to have greater confidence in the results. Periodic status animarum census reports reveal the same sex-ratio disparities in the countryside (more male) and in the town (more female). Periodic leaps in the sex ratio reflect poor harvests and their resulting high grain prices. However, some of the greatest sex-ratio imbalances emerge in the famine-free 1680s, when grain prices were at their nadir. Sharecroppers suffered from endemic low prices just like landowners and needed to optimise the size and the contours of their families. The eighteenth century brought no relief to their predicament.
