H.J. Marker
The Danish census of 1801 is fully machine readable and coding and
standardisation work on the data set is still ongoing. With a dataset of
about a million records you need to be sensible in your choice of strategy
if you actually want to achieve anything. Coding of Sex, marital status, and
age was carried on very soon after the completion of the data entry in 2001.
Presently the household status is coded for all inhabitants and thus the
household composition comes as a spinoff from this. Coding of occupations is
still ongoing.
Household size and composition in the early 19th century Denmark has been
the topic of some debate. In the 1980ies it seemed important to revise the
common perception that families were much larger in the past. Many
households were quite small single family households. The present enquiry
will show that nevertheless a substantial number of households were not only
rather big they also had a very complicated structure. The modern family
with your children, my children and our children certainly had many
counterparts 200 years ago. Then it usually was death not divource that
broke families, but the outcome was very similar.
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