Davenport Romola J
Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Department of Geography University of Cambridge.
Econ Hist Rev. 2020 May;73(2):455-485. doi: 10.1111/ehr.12964. Epub 2020 Feb 21.
In the long-running debate over standards of living during the industrial revolution, pessimists have identified deteriorating health conditions in towns as undermining the positive effects of rising real incomes on the 'biological standard of living'. This article reviews long-run historical relationships between urbanization and epidemiological trends in England, and then addresses the specific question: did mortality rise especially in rapidly growing industrial and manufacturing towns in the period . 1830-50? Using comparative data for British, European, and American cities and selected rural populations, this study finds good evidence for widespread increases in mortality in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. However, this phenomenon was not confined to 'new' or industrial towns. Instead, mortality rose in the 1830s especially among young children (aged one to four years) in a wide range of populations and environments. This pattern of heightened mortality extended between . 1830 and . 1870, and coincided with a well-established rise and decline in scarlet fever virulence and mortality. The evidence presented here therefore supports claims that mortality worsened for young children in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but also indicates that this phenomenon was more geographically ubiquitous, less severe, and less chronologically concentrated than previously argued.
在关于工业革命期间生活水平的长期争论中，悲观主义者认为城镇健康状况的恶化削弱了实际收入增长对“生物生活水平”的积极影响。本文回顾了英国城市化与流行病学趋势之间的长期历史关系，然后探讨了一个具体问题：在1830年至1850年期间，死亡率是否尤其在快速发展的工业和制造业城镇上升？利用英国、欧洲和美国城市以及选定农村人口的比较数据，本研究发现了充分证据表明19世纪中叶死亡率普遍上升。然而，这一现象并不局限于“新兴”或工业城镇。相反，19世纪30年代，死亡率上升尤其出现在广泛的人口群体和环境中的幼儿（1至4岁）身上。这种死亡率升高的模式在1830年至1870年期间一直存在，并且与猩红热毒力和死亡率的既定上升和下降相吻合。因此，这里提出的证据支持了这样的说法，即19世纪中叶幼儿的死亡率恶化了，但也表明这一现象在地理上更为普遍，程度较轻，且在时间上的集中程度低于先前的观点。
