Farm size and marital-status - county and provincial differences in arensberg and kimball ireland

Abstract

Precis: Recent debate concerning the validity of Arensberg and Kimball's ethnography has centred on the question of whether or not the rural west of Ireland demonstrated class stratification during the period of Arensberg and Kimball's study. Hannan has used figures from the 1926 census relating farm size to the proportion of older unmarried farmers as one measure of class differences. In this article, these measures are re-examined and Hannan's conclusion ? that farm size affected marital status in the east of Ireland but not in the west ? is rejected. It appears that farm size was of only minor importance throughout the country in this respect, and showed very little inter-provincial variation. Some alternative explanatory variables are hypothesised which account for the proportion single in each farm size category with a high level of accuracy.