Documenting Above-Replacement Fertility in Sub-Replacement Contexts
Joined November 2021
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Demographic Renaissance retweeted
Jun 7
Thread about Danthonia, Australia's Bruderhof:
1/8 I mentioned this community hidden in rural northern NSW in another post. Situated near the tiny locality of Elsmore (pop. 358 in 2021), sits the Danthonia Bruderhof community.
Let's take a look at it's demographics..
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Angola now has 4 Mennonite Colonies!
1. Lavoura Esperanza (Sommerfelders from MEX) - contract w the 'diamond mine'
2. Reinland (Old Colony from BOL)
3. Nordost (Old Colony from BOL)
4. Rosental (Old Colony from BOL)
3/4 are horse & buggy Old Colony Mennonites.
19 Jun 2025
New Mennonite Colony in Angola marks the first new group of European Settlers in Africa since the end of the Colonial Era, excluding former groups returning post-independence to resettle like the Rhodesians or Portuguese. Is it the start of a new tropical European-African Empire?
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1/2 @BirthGauge brings up an interesting point regarding China's Crude Migration Rate:
Children hidden during the One-Child Policy era *may have been added to official population records effectively as "migration" (offsetting emigration).
Migration figures now net 20/27 years
Jun 2
Could be that they counted them but the number of children hidden from the one child policy that were found later probably outnumbered the emigrants.
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@fuxianyi Perhaps this is old news, or the crude migration data is simply wrong (from Wikipedia, after all).
Interesting nonetheless. Net migration figures have changed quite a bit over time & seem oddly one-sided. Hard to believe China's gained millions of immigrants recently?
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2/2 A largely migration rate seems difficult to reconcile with the well-documented emigration of hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens annually (some years -0.3-0.5 million).
🇨🇳 net migration statistics may reflect delayed registration more than cross-border movement?
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1/ Hidden in Paris for over 200 years: a high-fertility religious community known as “La Famille.”
Marrying exclusively within their own sect, with ~4,000 members divided amongst only 8 surnames.
A history so unusual that one of their prophets even appears in Les Misérables.
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2/ La Famille has Christian roots stemming from 17th century Jansenism & 18th century Convulsionnaires movements.
Persecuted, in 1791 the brothers Claude & François Bonjour fled crucifixion in Lyon, settling in Paris on rue de Montreuil; where they converted Jean-Pierre Thibout
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Clarification: the authorities didn’t crucify Étiennette Thomasson - it was *François Bonjour* during a fringe ritual (albeit, she lived). The authorities actually arrested the Bonjour brothers, who were only released/fled years later amid the chaos of the French Revolution.
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6/ Still composed entirely of descendants from the original founding families, La Famille survives into the 21st century.
Only 8 surnames remain today, with one line gradually going extinct on the male side.
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20/ Marriage:
Marriage remains central, with young adults typically courting & marrying between ages 18–20.
-Though endogamous, close cousin marriages are avoided if possible.
-Divorce is prohibited.
-Contraception is heavily discouraged.
-Family sizes are very large (8 ).
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Some info on family size is available via news from defectors & current members.
# children (age of parent(s))
18 (70 )
13 (?)
11 (45 )
8 (50 - married 5th cousin)
8 (60 )
4 (father 27)
3 (3 children in 4 years of marriage before leaving).
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Thanks to @InfoAtJames and @MoreBirths for reminding me about posting them!
Definitely an interesting case of a heavily urbanized population maintaining large family sizes.
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24/ Splinter Sects:
In 1960, under Vincent Thibout, 15 families (~90 members) split from La Famille.
They attempted to establish his own "Kibboutz" (commune) in Pardailhan, Hérault.
Due to inexperience in agriculture and internal divisions, the project dissolved by 1963.
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25/ "Boissiers" Splinter:
After the failure at Pardailhan, Vincent Thibout founded a new community in 1969 in Boissiers, Haute-Loire.
Using a former holiday camp, it adopted a model inspired by Israeli kibbutzim and early Christian communities (today ~80 members).
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