Gretchen A. Condran

A Relational Model of Mortality at Older Ages in Low Mortality Countries

This paper presents a relational model of age-specific death rates at ages 45–99. It is based upon death rates calculated for single years of age and five-year periods from 1950 to 1985 in 16 low-mortality countries. Eighty-two data sets are used in the construction of the model. These data passed a rigorous quality test which involved comparisons of intercensal changes in cohort size with intercensal deaths. Construction of the model is based upon a logit transformation of death rates, which performed slightly better than a logarithmic transformation in statistical tests. A ‘standard’ mortality pattern is produced as a summary of age-specific death rates in these 82 data sets. Expressed in logits, the standard is highly linear in age for males. For females, systematic curvature of the type first identified by Horiuchi and Coale is observed. The proportionate rate of change in womens age-specific death rates is highest in the age group 70–80. Once this pattern has been embodied in the standard, we are ge...

Public Health Measures and Mortality in U.S. Cities in the Late Nineteenth Century

In this paper we examine the decline in mortality rates by cause of death in U.S. cities during the last decade of the. 19th century. Causes of death are grouped according to their probable relationship to specific public health measures. The reduction which occurred in the death rates from some diseases, e.g., typhoid and diarrheal diseases, can probably be attributed in part to the provision of sewers and waterworks. Large declines also occurred in the death rates from tuberculosis and diphtheria, but the relationship between the declines in these diseases and public health practices designed to combat them is more ambiguous. We therefore conclude that public health measures had some impact on the decline in mortality, but that these measures do not provide a complete explanation of the mortality decline.

Mortality trends in Philadelphia: Age- and cause-specific death rates 1870–1930

This article examines the decline in mortality which occurred in Philadelphia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Age- and cause-specific mortality rates accounting for the decline are isolated and the relative importance of several variables in explaining the reduction of overall mortality levels is assessed. By using small areas within the city we are able to establish the impact of particular innovations on specific causes of death.

Mortality differentials between rural and urban areas of states in the northeastern United States 1890–1900

Abstract Data from a number of countries show much higher mortality rates in urban than in rural areas in the nineteenth century. In this paper we examine the urban-rural mortality differential in the death registration states of the United States in 1890 and 1900. Before proceeding with the analysis, the data are evaluated and we determine that the data used for the 1900 analysis are more complete than data used in other analyses for the same date. An attempt is made to correct for the deficiencies in the 1890 data. When the urban and rural mortality levels are examined for individual states at both dates, urban mortality is generally higher than rural mortality. However, there is variability across states in urban mortality levels, rural mortality levels, and the urban-rural mortality differences. In general, the urban-rural mortality difference is larger in 1890 than in 1900. When the urban-rural mortality differences are examined in terms of the causes of death which account for the differential, we conclude that higher urban mortality rates are generally attributable to a few diseases—tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases and several other communicable diseases—the transmission of which depend heavily on close human contact or contamination of the environment.

Child Mortality among Jewish Immigrants to the United States

The authors analyze reasons for the low levels of infant and child mortality among Jewish immigrants to the United States in the early twentieth century. They examine historical interpretations of the phenomenon including racial and biological determinants family and child-care practices and better access to medical care and acceptance of scientific medicine. Data from the 1910 U.S. census are used to analyze the impact of assimilation socioeconomic status mothers literacy and labor force status and fertility levels. (ANNOTATION)

Early Death: Mortality among Young Children in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans

The high mortality of nineteenth-century cities included excess summer mortality among infants and young children. Data from New York City, New Or-leans, and Chicago from 1870 to 1917 and earlier data from New York City permit an examination of this high summer mortality and its decline during the early twentieth century in relation to changes in infant feeding practices, sanitation projects to improve water supplies and methods of waste disposal, and efforts to improve the quality of milk.

Evaluation of estimates of underenumeration in the census and the age pattern of mortality, philadelphia, 1880

The schedule of mortality by age for Philadelphia’s 1880 population classified by sex and race showed aberrations from Coale and Demeny West, South, and North model life tables. Deviations from standard age patterns of mortality were especially pronounced for the black population. The question addressed in this paper is whether the alternative age patterns of mortality are produced by underenumeration in the 1880census or by actual variations in the age-specific mortality experience. The conclusion was reached that the underenumeration of the urban population, especially the blacks, exceeds estimates for the national population. In addition, the results indicated that the black population faced risks of dying that genuinely differed from standard age patterns. An attempt to use a Brass logit model to generalize the black mortality experience met with success for females but not for males.

Linkage of the 1880-81 Philadelphia death register to the 1880 manuscript census: a comparison of hand and machine-record linkage techniques.

The authors describe the results of efforts to link information on black decedents from the 1880-1881 death register of Philadelphia to the 1880 U.S. census using a hand-linkage procedures with regard to the numbers of links and the biases of the linked files produced by each (ANNOTATION)

The elusive role of scientific medicine in mortality decline: diphtheria in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Philadelphia.

The designation of the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus as the cause of diphtheria in the early 1890s and the subsequent development of the antitoxin treatment in the years immediately following were at the time and continue to be viewed as triumphs of scientific medicine. I focus on these two developments to illustrate the problems that arise in attempting to answer the questions regarding the role that changes in medical practice—in this case, the use of antitoxin as a cure—played in lowering death rates at the time. Changes in diagnostic techniques, the selection of cases to be included, and ultimately the agendas of the persons constructing them affected the numerators and denominators of these rates. The data suggest that the antitoxin had some effect on already declining diphtheria death rates, but because of changes in understandings of the disease and contemporaries’ presentation of the data, the size of that effect and its role in mortality decline more generally elude us. Our analysis of the past depends on numbers that reflect not only changing treatments but also changing understandings of disease at the end of the nineteenth century.

Évolution du bien-être des enfants et transformations de la famille américaine.

Condran (Gretchen A.), Furstenberg (Frank F.) . - Evolucion del bienestar de los hijos y transformaciones de la familia americana. Los autores se prequntan sobre la existencia de un sincronismo, desfasado о no, entre la evolucion del numero de madres activas y el numero de divorcios o nacimientos fuera del matrimonio, de una parte, y entre la evolucion de madres activas y el numero de adolescentes que obtienen un diploma de enseňanza secundaria o se inscriben en ensefianza superior, que consumen drogas о alcohol, que cometen suicidios u homicidios, о que tienen un hijo fuera del matrimonio, de otra. Los primeros elementos son indicadores de los cambios que han afectado a la familia americana en los ultimos treinta aňos; los segundos son comporta- mientos de la juventud que podrian traducir los efectos nefastos de las transformaciones fa- miliares sobre estas generaciones cada vez mas afectadas рог ellas. Рог un lado, los cambios en la familia continuan y no indican un retorno a la forma tradicional: dos progenitores con una unica renta. Por otro lado, los comportamientos de la juventud han seguido una evolucion muy dispar: algunos indicadores revelan una mejora mas o menos continua del bienestar de los jovenes (proporcion de diplomas de enseňanza secundaria), otros muestran un deterioro inicial y estabilizacion reciente (acceso a la enseňanza superior, consumo de droga y alcohol, etc.) y un tercer grupo sufre una degrada- cion continua (homicidios, suicidios, fecundidad fuera del matrimonio). Este ultimo grupo es el unico que permite ilustrar una correlacion con las transformaciones familiares. Sin embargo, tambien en estos casos hay que matizar los resultados: los efectos son menores en el caso de las mujeres, y la situacion de blancos y negros evoluciona en algunos casos en sen- tido inverso. En resumen, la creencia general de una influencia nefasta de los cambios familiares sobre el bienestar de los hijos debe aceptarse con fuertes reservas.