Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the steep decline of infant and child mortality of the Gitanos of Spain in the second half of the twentieth century. It uses data from a study combining demographic and ethnographic methods.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on a family and genealogy reconstitution of the Gitano population of 22 contiguous localities in the province of Granada, Spain. It combines demographic and ethnographic methods, and includes data on around 18.600 people. From this database we have produced annual time series of infant (under 1-year of age) and child (1 to four-years of age) mortality from 1871 to 2007. The series show a steep decline of infant and child mortality in the second half of the twentieth century. The onset of definitive decline seems to have taken place between 1948 and 1956. Child mortality was higher in the pre-transitional period but started to decline earlier. These are parallel processes to those affecting the dominant majority, but with important delays and differences due to the exclusion and higher deprivation of the Gitano minority, and also to their reproductive strategies and higher fertility. The paper explores the many crucial consequences that this decline has ha

d for the life of Gitano people, especially Gitano women. The paper shows that some of the most important changes experienced by Romani groups in all of Europe in the last century have been demographic, and have been ignored by academics, Romani militants and policy makers.