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Mortality Rates and Trends in Massachusetts Before 1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Maris A. Vinovskis
Maris A. Vinovskis
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

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.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-first Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 184 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1972

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References

1 For a discussion of birth and death registration in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Massachusetts, see Gutman, Robert, “Birth and Death Registration in Massachusetts: The Colonial Background, 1639–1800,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, XXXVI, No. 1 (Jan. 1958), 58–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blake, John B., “The Early History of Vital Statistics in Massachusetts,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, XXIX (1955), 46–54.Google Scholar

2 Gutman, Robert, “The Accuracy of Vital Statistics in Massachusetts, 1842–1901,” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1956), pp. 114–231.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 For a discussion of the attempts by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to collect bills of mortality, see Vinovskis, Maris A., “The 1789 Life Table of Edward Wigglesworth,” The Journal of Economic History, XXXI, No. 3 (Sept. 1971), 570–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a general discussion of colonial bills of mortality, see Cassedy, James H., Demography in Early America: Beginnings of the Statistical Mind, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 117–47, 243–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The volumes, were, compiled and edited by several genealogical societies. Most were done under the guidance of the New England Historic.Genealogical Society and the Essex Institute. Whichever group published them, the records generally had the title, Vital Records of … to 1850. For a discussion of the type of information available in these volumes, see Somerville, James K., “Family Demography and the Published Records: An Analysis of the Vital Statistics of Salem, Massachusetts,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, CVI, No. 4 (Oct. 1970), 243–51.Google Scholar

6 For example, Higgs, Robert and Stettler, H. Louis III, “Colonial New England Demography: A Sampling Approach,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XXVII, No. 2 (April 1970), 282–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jaffe, A. J. and Lourie, W. I. Jr, “An Abridged Life Table for the White Population of the United States in 1830,” Human Biology, XIV, No.3 (Sept. 1942), 352–71Google Scholar;

7 The original data used in assembling the bill of mortality for Salem in 1820 is located at the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts.

8 For example, see Greven, Philip Jr, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970), p. 188.Google Scholar

9 Jaffe and Lourie, “An Abridged Life Table ….”

10 For a thorough discussion of the techniques and hazards of reconstituting families, see An Introduction to English Historical Demography ed. Wrigley, E. A. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1966).Google Scholar

11 Engelmann, George J., “The Increasing Sterility of American Women,” The Journal of the American Medical Association, XXXVII (Oct. 1901), 891–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Carl E., “A Genealogical Study of Population,” Publications of the American Statistical Association, XVI (Dec. 1918), 201–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For example, see Harris, P. M. G., “The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations,” Perspectives in American History, III (1969), 157–344.Google Scholar

13 Susan L. Norton, “Population Growth in Colonial America: A Study of Ipswich, Massachusetts,” Population Studies (forthcoming).

14 For an excellent discussion of the various problems in trying to calculate accurate mortality data from reconstituted families, see Wrigley, E. A., “Mortality in Pre-Industrial England: The Example of Colyton, Devon, Over Three Centuries,” Daedalus, XCVII, No. 2 (Spring 1968), 546–80.Google Scholar Wrigley also relied on married adults in order to estimate life expectancies in Colyton.

15 Dethlefsen, Edwin S., “Colonial Gravestones and Demography,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, XXXI, No. 3 (Nov. 1969), 321–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 For a discussion of the use of stationary life tables, see Barclay, George W., Techniques of Population Analysis (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1958), pp. 131, 214, 216.Google Scholar For a critique of Wigglesworth's efforts to use a stationary life table model, see Vinovskis, “The 1789 Life Table of Edward Wigglesworth.”

17 Two studies of mortality in colonial America that have been quite careful from a methodological point are Norton and Greven (see fns. 8, 13).

18 Lockridge, Kenneth A., “The Population of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XIX (Aug. 1966), 324–26, 332–39.Google Scholar

19 Greven, Four Generations…, pp. 185–197.

20 Norton estimated that deaths were under-registered by 59 percent in colonial Ipswich. Lockridge estimated that recorded deaths were only 44 percent of the true total deaths. Lockridge, p. 331. For an estimate of the possible under-registration of deaths in the vital records of Salem, see Table 1.

21 For a discussion of current vs. generation life tables, see Dublin, Louis I., Lotka, Alfred J., and Spiegelman, Mortimer, Length of Life: A Study of the Life Table (New York: Ronald Press, 1949), pp. 174–82.Google Scholar

22 Greven, Four Generations …, p. 189.

23 Norton, “Population Growth ….“

24 For an analysis of health conditions in Boston during this period, see Blake, John B., Public Health in the Town of Boston: 1630–1822 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

25 Somerville, James K., “A Demographic Profile of the Salem Family, 1660–1770,” unpublished paper presented at the Conference on Social History at Stony Brook, New York, October 25, 1969.Google Scholar Somerville's general findings are probably correct, but they are based on a relatively small sample size and his age-specific mortality rates for women in the seventeenth century are erratic. My own study of Salem families from 1630–1800 is based on a reconstitution of all families who lived there during those years and should improve Somerville's mortality estimates.

26 See Wrigley, “Mortality in Pre-Industrial England …”, pp. 564–72.

27 Goubert, Pierre, “Legitimate Fecundity and Infant Mortality in France During the Eighteenth Century: A Comparison,” Daedalus, XCVII, No. 2 (Spring 1968), 593–603.Google Scholar

28 Greven, Four Generations …, p. 189.

29 Norton, “Population Growth …”

30 Somerville, “A Demographic Profile …”

31 Vinovskis, “The 1789 Life Table ….“

32 Jaffe and Lourie, “An Abridged Life Table …”; Elliott, E. B., “On the Law of Human Mortality that Appears to Obtain in Massachusetts, with Tables of Practical Value Deduced Therefrom.” Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1858), pp. 51–81.Google Scholar

33 Thompson, Warren S. and Whelpton, P. K., Population Trends in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1933), pp. 228–40.Google Scholar

34 Yasuba, Yasukichi, Birth Rates of the White Population in the United States 1800–1860: An Economic Study (The John Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, LXXIX, No. 2 [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962]), 86–96.Google Scholar

35 I am indebted to Professor David H. Fischer of Brandeis University for sharing his collection of Massachusetts bills of mortality with me.

36 For example, bills of mortality are available for Ashburnham (1770–1859), Bedford (1825–1850), Boston (1811–1841), Brookline (1760–1812), Concord (1779–1828), Dorchester (1749–1803), Edgartown (1761–1793), Hopkinton (1772–1794), Kingston (1781–1814), Lancaster (1810–1822), Marlborough (1760–1849), Salem (1768–1843), Sterling (1779–1825), Warwick (1807–1841), and Worcester (1775–1838).

37 Jaffe and Lourie, “An Abridged Life Table …,” pp. 352–71.

38 ibid.

39 Some of the results are clearly unreasonable. For example, Jaffe and Lourie's data indicate a crude death rate of 4.8 per thousand in Lynnfield and one of 4.9 in Burlington. Jaffe and Lourie, p. 368.

40 Ibid.

41 Elliott, “On the Law of Human Mortality ….”

42 For an excellent critique of the shortcomings of Elliott's table of 1855, see Robert Gutman, “The Accuracy of Vital Statistics in Massachusetts, 1842–1901”, pp. 213–26.

43 Elliott, “On the Law of Human Mortality …,” pp. 51–55.

44 Gutman chose to use 12 per thousand as a cut-off point, but he admitted that death rates of 10–12 per thousand were quite reasonable for many Massachusetts towns during this period. Robert Gutman, “The Accuracy of Vital Statistics in Massachusetts, 1842–1901,” pp. 213–26. I have chosen the cut-off point at 10 per thousand as it seems the most reasonable from my investigation of death rates in Massachusetts. However, my estimates of life expectancies might be slightly biased upward by the inclusion of a few towns with under-registered deaths.