Mortality Rates and Trends in Massachusetts Before 1860

Abstract

The study of mortality rates and trends in the United States before 1860 has been rather unsystematic to date. Most scholars have been content to estimate the mortality rate at some point in time and only a few serious efforts have been made to ascertain the long-term trends in mortality. Particularly lacking are efforts to relate estimates of mortality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to those of the nineteenth century. In addition, the few studies that have attempted to discuss long-term trends in American mortality have been forced to rely on estimates of mortality gathered from different sources and based on different techniques of analysis. Unfortunately, almost no efforts have been made to estimate possible biases introduced when comparing mortality data from different types of records.

The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms

“…The mortality rate appears to have been influenced both by the size of the city and by the rapidity of its rate of growth. En the U.S. case c. 1830, cities with 50,000 or more persons had more than twice the death rates of rural areas (Vinovskis 1972;Fogel et al 1978) and similar patterns have been observed for Europe (Weber 1899;Woods 1984;Bairoch 1988). The exact threshold at which city size began to affect mortality rates varied with time, place, and circumstance, but in the U.S. during the mid-nineteenth century, cities of about 25,000 persons appear to have been the threshold of significant 40 elevation in mortality rates.11…”

“…In regressions relating final heights of native-born white males to socioeconomic factors, dummy variables for city-size did not become significantly negative until the dummy for 25,000-49,999. For similar results based on direct measurement of mortality see Vinovskis (1972).…”

Health, Gender and the Household: Children’s Growth in the Marcella Street Home, Boston, MA, and the Ashford School, London, UK

“…States, but generally the literature finds that female and male mortality rates were very similar until the Civil War when excess male mortality became the norm (Pope, 1992;Haines, 2000;Vinovskis, 1972). Thus, overall the evidence on excess female mortality is very mixed in Britain and the United States.…”

The age–sex structure of the slave population in Harris County, Texas: 1850 and 1860

“…This was an environment which included not only the surrounding physical environment, but also the cultural environment-the system of slavery. Factors controlled by this system which affected the demography of slaves have been examined in the eastern United States and the Caribbean, however studies on slavery in western states is limited (Evans, 1962;Vinovskis, 1972). The present study provides information on the age-sex structure of a slave population in the West, in the State of Texas, and suggests how the system of slavery influenced the demography of this slave population.…”

“…For example, Vinovskis (1972) calculated the life expectancy of slaves in Massachusetts using the 1859-61 registration data. He estimated an expectation of life at birth of 46.4 years for males and 47.3 years for female slaves.…”