Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-31T15:07:44.878Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Excess Female Mortality in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales

A Regional Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Kirsty McNay ,
Jane Humphries  and
Stephan Klasen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sex differences in mortality among historical populations are an intriguing yet neglected issue. In mid-nineteenth-century England and Wales, although women and girls enjoyed an overall longevity advantage, they tended to die at higher rates than males at ages when modern life tables show female advantage. We use multilevel modeling to analyze these sex differences in mortality. We identify significant regional variation, related to local demographic conditions, economic structure, and the nature of female employment. But some regional variation remains unexplained, suggesting the need for further investigation.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , winter 2005 , pp. 649 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amin, S., Diamond, I., and Steele, F. (1997) “Contraception and religiosity in Bangladesh,” in Jones, G. W., Douglas, R. M., Caldwell, J. C., and D’Souza, R. M. (eds.) The Continuing Demographic Transition. Oxford: Clarendon: 269–89.Google Scholar
Anderson, M. (1990) “The social implications of demographic change,” in Thompson, F. M. L. (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950. Vol. 2, People and Their Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1–70.Google Scholar
Boserup, E. (1970) Women’s Role in Economic Development. New York: St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
Bryder, L. (1988) Below the Magic Mountain: A Social History of Tuberculosis in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Curtis, S. L., Diamond, I., and McDonald, J. W. (1993) “Birth interval and family effects on postneonatal mortality in Brazil.” Demography 30: 33–43.Google Scholar
Devos, I. (1994) “La surmortalité des filles en Belgique de 1890 à 1910: Une analyse régionale.” Master’s thesis, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Institut de démographie.Google Scholar
Eggerickx, T., and Tabutin, D. (1994) “La surmortalité des filles vers 1890 en Belgique: Une approche régionale.” Population 49: 657–84.Google Scholar
Galley, C., and Shelton, N. (2001) “Bridging the gap: Determining long-term changes in infant mortality in pre-registration England and Wales.” Population Studies 55: 65–77.Google Scholar
Gatley, D. A. (1996) A Handbook to the 1861 Census and Vital Registration Database. Staffordshire, UK: School of Social Sciences, Staffordshire University.Google Scholar
Ginsberg, C. A., and Swedlund, A. C. (1986) “Sex-specific mortality and economic opportunities: Massachusetts, 1860–1899.” Continuity and Change 1: 415–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldstein, H., and Healy, M. J. R. (1995) “The graphical presentation of a collection of means.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society): 158: 175–77.Google Scholar
Graunt, J. (1662) Natural and Political Observations, Mentioned in a Following Index, and Made upon the Bills of Mortality. London: Thomas Roycroft.Google Scholar
Grey, E. (1935) Cottage Life in a Hertfordshire Village. London: Fisher Knight.Google Scholar
Hammel, E. A., Johansson, S. R., and Ginsberg, C. A. (1983) “The value of children during industrialization: Sex ratios in childhood in nineteenth-century America.” Journal of Family History 8: 346–66.Google Scholar
Henry, L. (1989) “Men’s and women’s mortality in the past.” Population: An English Selection 44: 177–201.Google Scholar
Hill, K., and Upchurch, D. M. (1995) “Gender differences in child health: Evidence from the Demographic and Health Surveys.” Population and Development Review 21: 127–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Högberg, U., and Wall, S. (1986) “Secular trends in maternal mortality in Sweden from 1750 to 1980.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 64: 79–84.Google Scholar
Horrell, S., and Humphries, J. (1995) “Women’s labour force participation and the transition to the male-breadwinner family.” Economic History Review 48: 89–117.Google Scholar
Humphries, J. (1987) “‘The most free from objection’: The sexual division of labour and women’s work in nineteenth-century England.” Journal of Economic History 47: 929–49.Google Scholar
Humphries, J. (1991) “‘Bread and a pennyworth of treacle’: Excess female mortality in England in the 1840s.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 15: 451–73.Google Scholar
Humphries, J., and McNay, K. (1998) “Gender, death, and welfare during the British Industrial Revolution.” Unpublished MS, Faculty of Modern History, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Johansson, S. R. (1977) “Sex and death in Victorian England: An examination of age- and sex-specific death rates, 1840–1910,” in Vicinus, M. (ed.) A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian Women. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 163–81.Google Scholar
Johansson, S. R. (1991) “Welfare, mortality, and gender: Continuity and change in theories about male/female mortality differences over three centuries.” Continuity and Change 6: 135–77.Google Scholar
Johansson, S. R. (1996) “Excess female mortality: Constructing survival during development in Meiji Japan and Victorian England,” in Digby, A. and Stewart, J. (eds.) Gender, Health, and Welfare. London: Routledge: 32–66.Google Scholar
Kearns, G. (1991) “Biology, class, and the urban penalty,” in Kearns, G. and Withers, C. W. J. (eds.) Urbanising Britain: Essays on Class and Community in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 12–30.Google Scholar
Kennedy, R. E. (1973) The Irish: Emigration, Marriage, and Fertility. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Klasen, S. (1998) “Marriage, bargaining, and intrahousehold resource allocation: Excess female mortality among adults during early German development, 1740–1860.” Journal of Economic History 58: 432–67.Google Scholar
Lee, C. H. (1991) “Regional inequalities in infant mortality in Britain, 1861–1971: Patterns and hypotheses.” Population Studies 45: 55–65.Google Scholar
Loudon, I. (1992) Death in Childbirth: An International Study of Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality, 1800–1950. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Malinvaud, E. (1970) Statistical Methods in Econometrics. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Mitch, D. F. (1986) “The impact of subsidies to elementary schooling on enrollment rates in nineteenth-century England.” Economic History Review 39: 371–91.Google Scholar
Nicholas, S., and Oxley, D. (1993) “The living standards of women during the Industrial Revolution, 1795–1820.” Economic History Review 46: 723–49.Google Scholar
Perrenoud, A. (1981) “Surmortalité féminine et condition de la femme (XVII-XIXe siècles): Une vérification empirique.” Annales de Démographie Historique 18: 89–105.Google Scholar
Preston, S. (1976) Mortality Patterns in National Populations: With Special Reference to Recorded Causes of Death. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Rasbash, J., Browne, W., Goldstein, H., Yang, M., Plewis, I., Healy, M., Woodhouse, G., Draper, D., Langford, I., and Lewis, T. (2000) A User’s Guide to MLwiN. London: Centre for Multilevel Modelling, Institute of Education, University of London.Google Scholar
Schofield, R. (1986) “Did the mothers really die? Three centuries of maternal mortality in ‘The World We Have Lost,’” in Bonfield, L., Smith, R. M., and Wrightson, K. (eds.) The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 231–60.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (1990) “Gender and co-operative conflict,” in Tinker, I. (ed.) Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 123–49.Google Scholar
Sharpe, P. (1991) “Literally spinsters: A new interpretation of the local economy and demography in Colyton in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Economic History Review 46: 46–65.Google Scholar
Shelton, N. (2000) “Childhood mortality and the public health response in Victorian and Edwardian Devon and Cornwall.” PhD diss., Liverpool University.Google Scholar
Snell, K. D. M. (1985) Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change in Agrarian England, 1660–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szreter, S., and Hardy, A. (2001) “Urban fertility and mortality patterns,” in Daunton, M. (ed.) The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol. 3, 1840–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 629–72.Google Scholar
Tabutin, D., and Willems, M. (1998) “Differential mortality by sex from birth to adolescence: The historical experience of the West (1750–1930),” in United Nations (ed.) Too Young to Die: Genes or Gender? New York: United Nations: 17–52.Google Scholar
Tew, M. (1990) Safer Childbirth? A Critical History of Maternity Care. London: Chapman and Hall.Google Scholar
United Nations (1998) “The extent and causes of female disadvantage in mortality: An overview,” in United Nations (ed.) Too Young to Die: Genes or Gender? New York: United Nations: 1–15.Google Scholar
Verdon, N. (2003) Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England: Gender, Work, and Wages. Suffolk: Boydell.Google Scholar
Waldron, I. (1983) “The role of genetic and biological factors in sex differences in mortality,” in Lopez, A. D. and Ruzicka, L. T. (eds.) Sex Differentials in Mortality: Trends, Determinants, and Consequences. Canberra: Australian National University Press: 141–64.Google Scholar
Woods, R. (1987) “Approaches to the fertility transition in Victorian England.” Population Studies 41: 283–311.Google Scholar
Woods, R. (1992) The Population of Britain in the Nineteenth Century. London: Macmillan Education.Google Scholar
Woods, R. (2000) The Demography of Victorian England and Wales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woods, R., and Hinde, P. R. A. (1987) “Mortality in Victorian England: Models and patterns.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18: 27–54.Google Scholar
Woods, R., and Shelton, N. (1997) An Atlas of Victorian Mortality. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Wrigley, A. E., Davies, R. S., Oeppen, J. E., and Schofield, R. S. (1997) English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580–1837. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar