Preliminary Programme

We investigate the development of social inequality in mortality in the adult population during the mortality transition and the possible changes of social position and family aspects in this process. We test the hypothesis that social differences in mortality developed during the first half of the 20th century. We also analyse if this changed the role of transfers of mortality patterns within families. This study will focus on mortality in the Skellefteå and Umeå regions in northern Sweden 1850-1960.
Several studies have shown how important wealth and access to economic resources are for health, but the question is how this has developed in history. Antonovsky (1967) suggests that social differences were comparatively small during the pre-transitional phase when space was a strong determinant, but that they increased during the transitional phase when mortality declined and wealthy groups used their resources to gain better health, and to eventually become marginal in modern low-mortality societies. Later studies have refuted some of his assumptions, for example that of declining differences. Even in modern wealthy societies social health inequality is substantial. In fact, it even seems as if (at least relative) differences are increasing (Kunst et al. 2004; Fritzell and Lundberg 2007).
During recent years increased attention has been paid to the historical perspective on social health inequalities. The results from different studies have diverged, some reporting substantial differences but many finding surprisingly small differences during the first stages of the transition (Bengtsson and van Poppel 2011). It is certainly not obvious that historical societies were characterized by the often assumed social inequalities in survival. Higher social position may have become more decisive later in the epidemiologic transition when infectious diseases were partly controlled and chronic diseases instead came to dominate. Research has revealed a complex pattern of social class, material conditions, psycho-social effects, and health-related behaviour. In their overview on this topic Bengtsson and van Poppel (2011) hypothetically suggest that consistent social health inequalities developed not until the first half of the 20th century.
To summarize the present state of knowledge about the development of social health inequalities (in Sweden but relevant also for other countries), no clear social hierarchy has been found before 1900 but substantial differences towards the late 20th and early 21st century. It appears as if a more consequent social health divide developed in the period in-between.
We also know that there is a strong family component in health and mortality. If this is genetically transferred, through shared living conditions or through transferred behavior can differ. Its relation to socio-economic determinants are not completely clear. It is possible that family aspects become less important when social health differences increases. In this paper we address the questions both of how social differences in mortality developed and what this meant for the impact of family dependency in mortality, both in the form of transfers of mortality patterns between generations and mortality levels within sibling groups.
In our study, we use microdata from the Demographic Data Base, Umeå University. The data set is retrieved from the database Poplink, digitised parish registers for the Skellefteå and Umeå region. (Show less)

Life conditions have improved drastically over the past 200 years. Mainly under the influence of improved living standards, hygiene and preventive medicine, life expectancies increased as mortality rates for the youngest decreased considerably. However, little is known about whether the eldest in society – the top of the population pyramid – also profited from increased survival chances before WWI. This is peculiar considering that the western world has been experiencing a longevity revolution since then. Were people already were pushing the boundaries of old age in the 19th century, and if so, did everyone have an equal chance to live a long life?
An enquiry into the prevalence of longevity in the 19th century can help to discern when and where life conditions started to improve. In this paper, I will enquire whether spatial differences in longevity are related to local disease environments, urbanisation, industrialisation, local agricultural traditions, and acceptance of new medical practices. Research into early-life mortality has shown that infant and child mortality has had a strong spatial dimension in the Netherlands. Studies on spatial variance in longevity have yet to occur, even though there is a strong intuition that later-life mortality is linked to early-life mortality.
Inferences on the nature of longevity will be based on civil registration data for Drenthe, Groningen and Zeeland. The life spans of people who were born between 1812 and 1867 in these three Dutch provinces are reconstructed to identify individual and spatial patterns in the lifespan of the long-living over time. This data has never been presented before, and can be used to put the demographic past and present into perspective. (Show less)

The term ‘illegitimate’ and all of its synonyms are value judgements, and by understanding what a society deemed inappropriate or unacceptable and why we can better understand the values of that society. This is particularly important for Wales because it is a part of the UK which has received considerably less attention from academics. There are many popular myths and scholarly assumptions which have not been fully explored, and there has been a tendency to take evidence from England and say ‘and to a lesser extent Wales’. Recent demographic research has demonstrated that, in comparison with England, certain parts of Wales experienced significantly higher levels of illegitimacy at least 150 years prior to the first official census. This paper explores the experience of illegitimacy in previously under-studied regions of eighteenth-century Wales, particularly by examining the link between identifiable paternity and both acceptable non-conforming conjugal unions and illicit sexual encounters. The significance of the frequency with which fathers of illegitimate children were identified at the time of baptism – a recurring phenomenon unique to Wales – is explored. This evidence suggests there may have been a diverse typology of ‘illegitimacies’ which carried varying levels of social acceptability and had considerable implications for illegitimate children and their mothers. The hypothesis that there are correlations between both licit and illicit identifiable illegitimate paternities and infant mortality rates is tested through demographic analysis of parish baptism and burial records. If increased identifiable illegitimate paternity was the result of non-traditional cohabitative conjugal unions children born into such unions would have better survival rates than children whose fathers were not identified. This is because a present father suggests a provision of care for children similar to that of a traditional marital union. However if the presence of fathers in illegitimate baptism records is indicative of illicit sexual unions where a child was considered to be at greater risk of poverty, it would be expected that their mortality rates would be higher. The aim of this research is to provide fresh insight into our understanding of illegitimacy and infant mortality and broaden our understanding of courtship, marriage and sex in early modern Britain. (Show less)

Early deaths tend to cluster in high-risk families, which lose a disproportionally large number of children and infants. Earlier research has shown that risk of mortality clustering is transferred between generations, meaning that grandparents and parents face similar levels of risk. In other words, parents who lost many siblings have an increased risk to lose their children. It is unclear why this is the case, but possibly determinants of mortality in the first generation are similar in the second generation. For instance, if socioeconomic mobility is low, socioeconomic circumstances in the second generation reflect those in the first generation and in the absence of migration, environmental constraints may be largely similar for grandparents and parents.
Another explanation, however, could be that the health of survivors is permanently damaged because of their childhood circumstances. Earlier research has emphasized that the health of cohorts is determined by the disease load and by nutritional crises during critical periods in their youth. These mechanisms may also be applicable to families which fail to save their young children, and thus, survivors may face permanent and negative health consequences of their childhood conditions. Their damaged health can in turn negatively affect their children’s chances of survival, possibly resulting in repeated early life mortality clustering. Explanatory pathways include damage in the reproductive organs and reduced fertility; late marriage; and early mortality in adulthood. In this contribution, I will explore the extent to which clustering is transferred from generation to generation, and whether ill health of survivors and their life course characteristics may explain the relationship between risk of child mortality in the family of the grandparent and the parent. (Show less)

The aim of this paper is to explore the possible practice and character of (female) infanticide in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Netherlands. According to Kate Lynch (2011), several features of European society such as the long-term presence of wage-labor markets in which girls and women were involved and the importance of both popular and institutional Christianity helped mitigate discrimination against young women in these regions. However, the question whether female infanticide was more of less absent in Dutch society remains open. By reviewing the literature on infanticide in the Netherlands this exploratory paper will try to shed some light on the possible character and practices of female infanticide varying from studies on excess female mortality from infectious diseases to the legal setting of child murder in crime records. (Show less)