Representation Is Crucial for Deriving Inferences from Online Genealogies: Evidence from Lifespan Dynamics

Robert Stelter , University of Basel
Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Crowd-sourced online genealogies have an unprecedented potential to shed light on long-run population dynamics, if analyzed properly. We investigate whether historical mortality dynamics of males in familinx, a popular genealogical dataset, are representative of the general population or if they are closer to an elite subpopulation in two territories. The first is the German Empire, with a low genealogical coverage relative to the total population size; the second is the Netherlands, with a higher coverage. We find that familinx' mortality is consistently lower and more homogeneous than mortality in the general population around the turn of the twentieth century (when benchmark national life tables are available). At that time, familinx' mortality resembled that of elites in the German Empire, while it was closer to the national life tables in the Netherlands. Before the nineteenth century, mortality in familinx mimicked that of the elites in both territories. We identify a low coverage of the total population and an oversampling of elites in online genealogies as potential explanations for these findings. Emerging digital data may yet revolutionize our knowledge of historical demographic dynamics – once we learn to recognize their potential and limitations.

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 Presented in Session 40. Mortality in the 19th and 20th centuries