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Wed 22 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 23 March
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    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
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    16:30

Sat 25 March
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    10:45
    14:15
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Wednesday 22 March 2006 16:30
N-4 FAM06 Infant mortality and gender
Room N
Network: Family and Demography Chair: Sølvi Sogner
Organizers: - Discussant: Sølvi Sogner
Kristina Bohman : Infant mortality in Ådalen, Sweden 1870 – 1910
Ådalen, an agrarian region in northern Sweden, had during the first half of the 19th century an unusually high infant mortality. Infant mortality rates often reached levels only found in urban areas. During the second half of the century the region experience a rapid population growth and a restructuring of ... (Show more)
Ådalen, an agrarian region in northern Sweden, had during the first half of the 19th century an unusually high infant mortality. Infant mortality rates often reached levels only found in urban areas. During the second half of the century the region experience a rapid population growth and a restructuring of the economy in conjunction with the expansion of the sawmill industry. Farmers no longer constituted the majority of the population. Despite the pressures of rapid industrialisation, infant mortality rates began to decline. This paper will consider changes in infant mortality using the mother as a point of reference. Earlier studies have shown that a mother acts as a filter improving or reducing the survival chances of her infant child. Did the changes that occurred in the region affect childcare and in particular infant feeding practices? What other factors influenced infant survival? Did these factors affect all women or were some more exposed that others? What did women who experienced many infant deaths have in common? What did women who experienced no infant deaths have in common? Why did infant mortality in Ådalen decline? (Show less)

Anders Brändström, John Rogers & Sören Edvinsson : Who were the winners - infant girls or infant boys? A study of infant mortality in nineteenth century Sweden
This paper will explore, using statistical analyses and a data set which includes over a 130,000 births, the significance of various variables for explaining differences in survival between infant girls and infant boys.
Among the variables included in the analyses are family size, birth order, previous infant deaths within the family, ... (Show more)
This paper will explore, using statistical analyses and a data set which includes over a 130,000 births, the significance of various variables for explaining differences in survival between infant girls and infant boys.
Among the variables included in the analyses are family size, birth order, previous infant deaths within the family, literacy, and social status. (Show less)

Janet McCalman : ‘Social Parenthood’ and Adult Survival Time in Australia: 1857-1985
In the first cradle-to-grave population study of nineteenth-century European Australians, fertility as recorded on the death certificate, was one of most significant indicators of longevity. But a death certificate’s information depends on the informants present at the registration of the death. The detail and accuracy of their remembered family history ... (Show more)
In the first cradle-to-grave population study of nineteenth-century European Australians, fertility as recorded on the death certificate, was one of most significant indicators of longevity. But a death certificate’s information depends on the informants present at the registration of the death. The detail and accuracy of their remembered family history can indicate the quality of communication over time within the family. Therefore the family structure recorded at death can be interpreted as the measure of a ‘social parenthood’—the formation of a family that has remained in contact with the deceased and has knowledge of itself. A number of individuals in this dataset of 3347 working-class Australian adults born in the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital between 1857 and 1900, are known to have become estranged from families they had founded and their survival time, like that of those who never married, was shorter. Therefore ‘social parenthood’, in particular for men in this dataset, suggested that there was a reciprocal relationship between biological and psychological fitness that was manifest in their ability to establish, materially support and earn the esteem of an enduring family. (Show less)

Patricia Thornton, Sherry Olson : ‘This wicked city’ : intra-urban and urban / rural contrasts in sex-differences in youth mortality in late 19th century Montreal.
This paper examines patterns of mortality by age, gender, and cause in Montreal in 1880 compared to the countryside. Like other nineteenth-century industrial cities, Montreal was a dangerous place for young people. Close to half died before reaching maturity, from the cumulative assaults of weanling diarrhoea, childhood contagion, tuberculosis and ... (Show more)
This paper examines patterns of mortality by age, gender, and cause in Montreal in 1880 compared to the countryside. Like other nineteenth-century industrial cities, Montreal was a dangerous place for young people. Close to half died before reaching maturity, from the cumulative assaults of weanling diarrhoea, childhood contagion, tuberculosis and work-related accidents. Inequalities in purchasing power and parsimony in public investment contributed to the large differences in the risk of dying at various ages, as did distinctive cultural practices in three groups: French Canadian, Irish Catholic, and Anglo-Protestant. Among the most pertinent are practices surrounding breastfeeding, weaning, vaccination and alcohol. Gender differences are apparent but not as wide as one might expect and overall tend to favour females. They do not seem to arise from differential allocation of resources between girls and boys, but from their differential exposure to specific risks; and they can be discerned only when analysed by ages, causes, economic and cultural contexts. Social and physical environments within the city along with gendered urban occupational structures underlie sex differentials in the mortality of the young. In Montreal, cause of death and family circumstances were well recorded in 1880, which is rare for North America. We linked cemetery registers to baptisms, taxroll and the nominal census of April 1881 and to the GIS of the city. For the large French Canadian subgroup, we confirm urban and rural differentials, compiled from reconstitutions of a thousand families, and from the Montreal foundling home we examine sex differentials of child abandonment (and almost certain death), at its peak in 1880. (Show less)



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