Article
ID: CBB328588806

Infant and child mortality by socio-economic status in early nineteenth-century England (2020)

unapi
Vital statistics Social class Social determinants of health Children 19th century England

Historical relationships between socio-economic 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. This study uses the paternal occupational descriptors routinely recorded in Anglican baptism registers from 1813–37 to compare infant and early childhood mortality by social status. The sample consists of eight of the Cambridge Group family reconstitution parishes, which make it possible to investigate the contributions of environment as well as household characteristics. The 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. The findings show 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 was labourers, who were among the poorest of fathers but whose children enjoyed relatively low mortality. Thus socio-economic differentials in mortality were present in early nineteenth-century England; however, they were small, age-specific, and non-linear.

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Authors & Contributors
Taylor, Steven J.
Tai, Sara J.
Hatton, Timothy J.
Inwood, Kris
Handerer, Fritz
Bailey, Roy E.
Journals
Economic History Review
Social History of Medicine
History of Psychiatry
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Medical History
Journal of Social History
Publishers
University of California, San Diego
Palgrave Macmillan
Ohio State University Press
English Heritage
Duke University Press
Concepts
Social class
Vital statistics
Children
Social determinants of health
Psychiatric hospitals
Science and society
People
Newton, S. W. A.
Dickens, Charles
Chadwick, Edwin
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
Early modern
17th century
Places
England
Wales
Germany
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Netherlands
France
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