The geography of early childhood mortality in England and Wales, 1881-1911

BACKGROUND Considerable regional variation existed in 19th century infant mortality (IMR) in England and Wales. OBJECTIVE This study estimates early childhood mortality (ECMR) for over 2,000 registration sub-districts (RSDs) of England and Wales and analyses spatial and temporal variations in IMR and ECMR between 1881 and 1911. METHODS The combination of mortality statistics from the Registrar General and individual-level census data from the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) project is used to estimate spatial models of the relationship between early childhood death rates and a range of district specific contextual variables. RESULTS All regions of England and Wales experienced noticeable decline in early childhood mortality but the spatial patterns were remarkably persistent, with high mortality in London and in the mining and textile centres. The earlier decline of childhood than infant mortality produced a widening gap between them, and in early phases this development was concentrated along the East-Midlands coastal area from Suffolk to North Yorkshire, and in mid-Wales. This gap continued to widen and in 1911 IMR was at least twice as high as ECMR in most parts of England and Wales. CONCLUSION The changing spatial pattern of ECMR was influenced by a set of factors over and above those which influenced IMR, and these were related more to the disease environment than to social and economic influences. CONTRIBUTION These new estimates of early childhood mortality, at a finer spatial scale than previously possible, highlight the vast spatial variation in mortality in England and Wales. It is likely that these regional differences also manifest in changes in other demographic outcomes

Socio-economic status and fertility in an urban context at the end of the nineteenth century: a linked records study from Tartu, Estonia

The topic of socio-economic fertility differences and its causes during the demographic transition has received a significant amount of attention in historical demography. With few exceptions, however, the previous studies have dealt with Western Europe. This paper increases the geographic range of the literature and investigates the influence of socio-economic status on marital fertility in an urban population of Tartu, a mid-sized university town in Estonia. Unlike previous studies, we perform both a cross-sectional analysis – using census data to analyse net marital fertility – and event history analysis – using linked-records sample to analyse the probability of next birth after the census. We measure socio-economic status based on the husband’s occupation, but also include information on the level of her education, employment and migration status. In line with the literature, our results confirm that women belonging to the highest social group to have considerably lower marital fertility in the early phase of transition. However, there is no linear social gradient in fertility in Tartu. Instead, we find women married to professionals and skilled workers to have higher fertility, whereas low fertility is exhibited also by women married to men working in the low-wage service sector. We fail to find any support that the educational level of the woman was differentiating fertility in the late nineteenth century Tartu. We relate these patterns in fertility to both adjustment to structural forces as well as innovation and diffusion of new demographic behaviour experienced by the local urban population during the fertility transition

Household and family structure in England and Wales (1851-1911): Continuities and change

AbstractThis article produces the first findings on changes in household and family structure in England and Wales during 1851–1911, using the recently available Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) – a complete count database of individual-level data extending to some 188 million records. As such, it extends and updates the important overview article published inContinuity and Changeby Michael Anderson in 1988. The I-CeM data shed new light on transitions in household structure and family life during this period, illustrating both continuities and change in a number of key areas: family composition; single parent families; living alone; extended households; childhood; leaving home and marriage patterns.</jats:p

The effect of parental loss on child survival in nineteenth century rural Estonia

This article explores the impact of parental loss and subsequent remarriage on child survival in the nineteenth century, by drawing on the example of post-emancipation rural Estonia. We utilize a novel, individual-level longitudinal dataset combining data from parish registers, poll-tax lists and migrant listings from 1826 to 1891, to examine: (1) how parental loss effects were differentiated by gender of the parent, (2) if the loss of parents could be compensated by remarriage, (3) how parental loss effects were felt differently by socioeconomic status of the household. Our results indicate that the effects of parental loss in this setting played in distinctive ways compared to those found in existing literature examining these processes in historical populations. Consistent with the literature, we find that parental loss effects were stronger when mothers died, but unlike other settings, these effects were felt longer in the Estonian setting and even among children aged 5–9 years. Also, paternal loss was associated with elevated mortality, especially among early childhood. We found no evidence to support the idea that remarriage for mothers improved survival prospects for children. However, there is clear support for improving prospects for children with the remarriage of fathers. When it comes to child health outcomes stepmothers were not as ‘evil’ as they have been depicted in Estonian folklore, although the resources in families were generally limited and stepchildren might have been discriminated against in the resource allocation within the household

Educational heterogamy during the early phase of the educational expansion: Results from the university town of Tartu, Estonia in the late 19th century

BACKGROUND In historical perspective, the transition from pre-industrial to modern societies is associated with increasing social status heterogamy. As individual’s acquired characteristics became more important for partner selection than inherited class status, the importance of status homogamy declined and marrying outside one’s own social group became more frequent. OBJECTIVE We investigate educational heterogamy in a university town at the eastern border of the Hajnal line at the end of the 19th century. We ask whether marriage of unequally educated partners is related to dissimilarity in other characteristics of the partners. Ethnic background, origin (place of birth) and age difference between the spouses are considered as characteristics that may associate with sorting into educationally heterogamous unions. METHODS The analysis uses data from the 1897 census in Tartu. Using logistic regression models, we estimate how age difference, origin heterogamy, and ethnic heterogamy of the spouses is associated with the probability of educational heterogamy. RESULTS The results indicate a positive relationship between educational heterogamy and marrying outside own ethnic or origin group, but no effect for spousal age difference. CONCLUSIONS Our study provides new evidence about marriage markets during modernisation, more specifically about the role of education. We show that educationally heterogamous unions in Tartu were also more often heterogamous in terms of partners’ background characteristics. This suggests that education may have motivated intermarriage by ethnicity and origin. CONTRIBUTION Previous literature on this period has focused on social homogamy based on occupational information, while research on educational assortative mating mostly exists for the second half of the 20th century and later. We contribute by studying the importance of education in marital selection in the early phase of the educational expansion and economic modernisation

Infant and child mortality by socio-economic status in early nineteenth-century England †

Historical relationships between socioeconomic status and mortality remain poorly understood. This is particularly the case in England, due to a lack of status indicators in available sources especially before c.1850. Here we used the paternal occupational descriptors routinely recorded in Anglican baptism registers from 1813–37 to compare infant and early childhood mortality by social status. Our sample consisted of eight of the Cambridge Group family reconstitution parishes, and allowed us to investigate the contributions of environment as well as household characteristics. Our main variable of interest was an individual-level continuous measure of wealth based on ranking paternal occupations by the propensity for their movable wealth to be inventoried upon death. We found that wealth conferred no clear survival advantage in infancy, once differences in average mortality levels between parishes were adjusted for. However, wealth was associated with higher survival rates in early childhood, especially in the second year of life, and this pattern persisted after adjustment for parish-level effects. The striking exception to this pattern were labourers, who were among the poorest of fathers but whose children enjoyed relatively low mortality. Thus socioeconomic differentials in mortality were present in early nineteenth-century England, however they were small, age-specific and non-linear

Demographic and Socio-economic Data for Registration Sub-districts of England and Wales, 1851-1911

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.This dataset contains a variety of measures of fertility, marriage and infant and child mortality, and also a range of socio-economic indicators (related to households, age structure, and social class) for the 2000+ Registration Sub Districts (RSDs) in both England and Wales, for each census year between 1851 and 1911. The measures have mainly been derived from the computerised individual level census enumerators' books (and household schedules for 1911) for England and Wales enhanced under the I-CeM project. I-CeM does not currently include data for 1871, although the project has been able to access a version of the data for that year it does not contain information necessary to calculate many of the variables presented here. Users should therefore beware that 1871 does not contain data for many of the variables. Additional data, for some indicators, has been derived from the tables summarising numbers of births and deaths by year and areas, which were published by the Registrar General in his quarterly, annual and decennial reports of births, deaths and marriages. Main Topics:Fertility, Infant mortality, Child mortality, Nuptiality, Illegitimacy, Household indicators, Socio-economic status, Age-structure.</p

Bounce backs amid continued losses: Life expectancy changes since COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented rise in mortality that translated into life expectancy losses around the world, with only a few exceptions. We estimate life expectancy changes in 29 countries since 2020, including most of Europe, the US and Chile, attribute them to mortality changes by age group, and compare them to historic life expectancy shocks. Our results show divergence in mortality impacts of the pandemic in 2021. While countries in Western Europe experienced bounce-backs from life expectancy losses of 2020, Eastern Europe and the US witnessed sustained and substantial life expectancy deficits. Life expectancy deficits among ages 60+ were strongly correlated with measures of vaccination uptake. In contrast to 2020, the age profile of excess mortality in 2021 was younger with those in under-80 age groups contributing more to life expectancy losses. However, even in 2021, registered COVID-19 deaths continued to account for most life expectancy losses

An introduction to the history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the long‐run decline in mortality†

This article, written during the COVID-19 epidemic, provides a general introduction to the long-term history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the spectacular long-term improvements in life expectancy since 1750, primarily with reference to English history. The story is a fundamentally optimistic one. In 2019 global life expectancy was approaching 73 years. In 1800 it was probably about 30. To understand the origins of this transition, we have to look at the historical sequence by which so many causes of premature death have been vanquished over time. In England that story begins much earlier than often supposed, in the years around 1600. The first two 'victories' were over famine and plague. However, economic changes with negative influences on mortality meant that, despite this, life expectancies were either falling or stable between the late sixteenth and mid eighteenth centuries. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw major declines in deaths from smallpox, malaria and typhus and the beginnings of the long-run increases in life expectancy. The period also saw urban areas become capable of demographic growth without a constant stream of migrants from the countryside: a necessary precondition for the global urbanization of the last two centuries and for modern economic growth. Since 1840 the highest national life expectancy globally has increased by three years in every decade