Socioeconomic Status and Mortality in the U.S., 1850-1880

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Since the 1960s, numerous studies have documented a link between low socioeconomic status (SES) and high risk for disease and premature mortality. This project will provide an understanding of the long-run progress made in narrowing disparities in health outcomes by SES, by producing data on more than 5,000 decedents and more than 625,000 survivors in the census years between 1850 and 1880 in a sample of rural and urban counties. This will be accomplished by linking individuals from the morality schedules of the 1850-80 censuses to the corresponding population schedules containing the surviving members of each decedent's household. The linked sample will contain, for each survivor and decedent, information on whether a death occurred (and if it did, its specific cause), and the household's wealth holdings, occupational status, literacy, and school attendance patterns. Together with the information on each household's location, this will make it possible to consider the link between SES and cause-specific mortality for a variety of locations and specific causes of death during three decades when the U.S. was experiencing rapid urbanization and industrialization. The ability to measure and explain the relationship between SES and mortality in the period 1850-80 will have two substantial benefits: (1) providing historical context for understanding the present-day link between economic circumstances and health outcomes, which will be of interest to both public health researchers and social scientists interested in health as a component of the standard of living; and (2) offering a new perspective on the "antebellum paradox" of rising per capita income and falling life expectation and falling physical stature in the middle decades of the nineteenth century identified by economic historians. In the absence of good micro-level data on mortality, the focus of most research on the antebellum paradox has been on physical stature. The explanation of the paradox is crucial to understanding the full costs and benefits of the economic growth experienced by the U.S. in the nineteenth century.