Dr. Tryfonas Lemontzoglou acts as Postdoctoral Researcher in Economic History at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (IMS) – Foundation of Research & Technology-Hellas (FORTH). In the past, he has also served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Quantitative Economic History at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He is currently a Teaching Fellow in Quantitative Social Research Methods at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (Department of Social Anthropology).
Tryfonas holds a PhD in Economics from the Tuscan Universities (Universities of Florence, Pisa and Siena), Italy, an MSc in Mathematical Modelling from NTUA, and a BSc in Finance and Accounting from the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB).
His research focuses on Quantitative Methods with a special focus on Economic History, Social Demography, Gender and Economic Growth & Well-Being.
Tryfonas has authored papers in peer reviewed Journals and conferences, has received a Doctoral Research Grant from the Tuscan Universities, and a Postdoctoral Research Grant from the State Scholarships Foundation.
- cv (Academic Curriculum Vitae)
Abstract: Family relations in late modern Greece have been shown to be greatly diversified compared to other European countries, mainly characterized by early marriages for women, low divorce rates for both sexes, and even lower levels of cohabitation and children born outside of marriage. However, the process of modernization that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Greece has slowly but steadily changed family patterns and behaviors, including a decline in marriage, an increase in marital breakdowns, and a relative rise in non-marital childbearing. Although these trends have been widely reported and discussed in the previous literature, empirical studies examining the key factors that have contributed to the rise in births outside marriage in early twentieth-century Greece are still very limited. Thus, the present paper aims to fill this gap by providing some of the first empirical evidence for the existence of a positive and significant linkage between non-marital births and socio-economic modernization in early twentieth-century Greece. For the purpose of my analysis, a new panel dataset has been constructed based on information obtained from the Natural Movement of Population, Causes of Death, and Agricultural Censuses of Greece, covering 32 regions during the period 1921-1938. More specifically, my panel estimates imply that women’s increased access to divorce and remarriage, as well as agrarian modernity, were both found to be positively associated with births outside marriage in early twentieth-century Greece. On the contrary, early-age marriage for women and married men’s stuck in agriculture have been found to adversely affect out-of-wedlock births. Finally, urban Greek areas and the Greek Islands appeared to have some positive effects on “illegitimate” births, while mortality rates were shown to be negatively related to “illegitimacy”.
Abstract: This paper provides some evidence on the causal relationships among non-marital childbearing, infant mortality, criminal behavior, and unemployment in Greece during the period 1956-1997, using annual data collected from the National Accounts Statistics of Greece and the World Bank dataset. In order to specify the long-run dynamics of non-marital childbearing in post-war Greece, we apply the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) co-integration approach and Granger causality tests. Results found in this study run contrary to results from previous studies that often associate births outside marriage with women’s social vulnerability, indicating that factors such as infant mortality, criminal behavior and unemployment have had significant negative long-run effects on the proportion of children born out of wedlock.
Abstract: The rise of modern capitalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has brought significant changes in every aspect of social life, offering women the opportunity to enter the paid labour force and thus diminishing traditional gender-role stereotypes. However, increased women’s labour force participation has further limited women’s economic dependence on men, significantly lowering exit costs from “bad” (low quality) marriages. In the same line of thought, Becker’s neoclassical theory of marriage has provided a deeper insight into the possible linkages between female employment and marital instability, arguing that the gains to marriage are greatest when men specialize in paid work, while women specialize in unpaid household activities. Within this framework, the case of early twentieth-century Greece remains largely unexplored in the empirical literature, even though it represents an interesting case of a highly diversified structure of family relations characterized by early marriages and low divorce rates. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing the first empirical evidence for the relationship between women’s labour force participation and female divorce rates in the early twentieth-century Greece. After analyzing provincial-level data from the 1907 and 1920 Greek Population Censuses, we found a positive association between female labour and female divorce rates, however, this effect is not always clear and straightforward. More specifically, total female employment and female participation in “modern” occupations have been found to be positively associated with female divorce rates, but statistically significant only in 1907. On the other hand, female employment in “traditional” agricultural activities has had no significant impact on female divorces. Other factors, such as early-age at marriage, women’s educational level, availability of single men, urbanization, ethic differences, men’s occupational status and religion, have been also taken into consideration.
Abstract: This paper examines possible links between modern family dynamics and a wide set of socio-economic and demographic factors, such as fertility, employment, education, health and wellness, urbanization, and government spending, using a panel data analysis for 27 selected European countries over the period 2005- 2017. Our estimates provide new insights into family formation and childbearing processes in post-2000 Europe, suggesting that women’s employment is positively related to new family forms, including cohabiting-parent families, single-parent families, and childbearing outside marriage. Results are also shown that female employment has positive relationships with total fertility. Finally, the paper finds that alternative family structures are positively associated with both total fertility and age-specific fertility rates.
Abstract: Many growth analysts have argued that more equal patterns of landownership and the supremacy of industry over agriculture were associated with the rise of mass public education systems during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The theoretical framework of this argument relies mainly on the so-called capital-skill complementarity hypothesis that agricultural land and industrial capital are characterized by different levels of complementarity with human skills. Thus, landowning elites were often reluctant to promote and support public education, while rising capitalists were much more in favor of a better-educated workforce and promoted major educational reforms. This paper seeks to provide some of the first empirical evidence of a significant positive relationship between more equitable distribution of landholdings and the development of literacy in late nineteenth-century Greece, using data from the Censuses of 1870 and 1879. Our estimates largely confirm previous findings of a positive and significant linkage between people’s access to land and literacy rates. On the contrary, labour concentration in the farm sector (the agriculture trap) has been found to be negatively and significantly related to literacy. These results remain robust after controlling for such other socioeconomic factors as marital status, family size, urbanization, ethnicity, religion, students’ attainment and teachers’ availability.
Tryfonas Lemontzoglou 