ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at data on fertility, illegitimacy, and number of births per woman, and at major causes of death and death statistics for the period. It aims to define the kinship system as it existed in the mid-eighteenth century as well as its operational importance for the subsistence-based economy in Sao Paulo at that time. In effect, migration was a factor in the demographic development of Sao Paulo since the sixteenth century. While day-to-day life in Sao Paulo was extremely affected by community relations, kinship, ritual kinship bonds, and mutual aid, the inheritance system combined with the colonial properly laws influenced paulista society in longer-term, structural ways. Cultural characteristics imbedded in the kinship structure and reflected in patterns of marriage, household formation, child-rearing, and inheritance have highly significant implications for fertility patterns. Inheritance has been generally recognized in the literature as having an important, if not critical, influence on population growth, household structure and composition and economic development.