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

自20世纪60年代以来，许多研究都证明了低社会经济地位(SES)与疾病和过早死亡的高风险之间的联系。该项目将通过提供1850年至1880年人口普查年中农村和城市县样本中5,000多名死者和625,000多名幸存者的数据，使人们了解社会保障系统在缩小健康结果差距方面取得的长期进展。这将通过将1850-80年人口普查的道德时间表中的个人与相应的人口时间表联系起来，其中包含每个死者家庭的幸存成员。链接的样本将包含每个幸存者和死者的信息，包括是否发生死亡(如果发生，具体原因)，以及家庭的财富持有、职业状况、识字和上学模式。结合每个家庭的位置信息，这将使我们有可能考虑在美国经历快速城市化和工业化的三十年里，不同地点和特定死因的SES和特定死因之间的联系。能够衡量和解释1850-80年期间SES和死亡率之间的关系将有两个实质性的好处：(1)为理解经济状况和健康结果之间的当代联系提供历史背景，这将引起公共卫生研究人员和社会科学家的兴趣，他们都对健康作为生活水平的一个组成部分感兴趣；以及(2)为经济史学家认定的19世纪中叶人均收入上升、预期寿命下降和身体身高下降的“战前悖论”提供了一个新的视角。在缺乏良好的微观层面的死亡率数据的情况下，对南北战争前悖论的大多数研究都集中在身体身高上。对这一悖论的解释对于理解美国在19世纪经历的经济增长的全部代价和好处至关重要。

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.