Stelter Robert, de la Croix David, Myrskylä Mikko
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Demography. 2021 Feb 1;58(1):111-135. doi: 10.1215/00703370-8938107.
When did mortality first start to decline, and among whom? We build a large, new data set with more than 30,000 scholars covering the sixteenth to the early twentieth century to analyze the timing of the mortality decline and the heterogeneity in life expectancy gains among scholars in the Holy Roman Empire. The large sample size, well-defined entry into the risk group, and heterogeneity in social status are among the key advantages of the new database. After recovering from a severe mortality crisis in the seventeenth century, life expectancy among scholars started to increase as early as in the eighteenth century, well before the Industrial Revolution. Our finding that members of scientific academies-an elite group among scholars-were the first to experience mortality improvements suggests that 300 years ago, individuals with higher social status already enjoyed lower mortality. We also show, however, that the onset of mortality improvements among scholars in medicine was delayed, possibly because these scholars were exposed to pathogens and did not have germ theory knowledge that might have protected them. The disadvantage among medical professionals decreased toward the end of the nineteenth century. Our results provide a new perspective on the historical timing of mortality improvements, and the database accompanying our study facilitates replication and extensions.
死亡率首次开始下降是在何时，以及在哪些人群中下降？我们构建了一个庞大的新数据集，涵盖16世纪至20世纪初的3万多名学者，以分析神圣罗马帝国学者死亡率下降的时间以及预期寿命增长的异质性。大样本量、明确界定的进入风险群体以及社会地位的异质性是新数据库的关键优势。在从17世纪的严重死亡率危机中恢复后，学者的预期寿命早在18世纪就开始增加，远早于工业革命。我们的研究发现，科学学会的成员——学者中的精英群体——是最早经历死亡率改善的，这表明300年前，社会地位较高的人已经享有较低的死亡率。然而，我们也表明，医学领域学者死亡率改善的开始时间有所延迟，可能是因为这些学者接触病原体，且没有可能保护他们的病菌理论知识。医学专业人员的劣势在19世纪末有所减少。我们的结果为死亡率改善的历史时间提供了新视角，并且我们研究附带的数据库便于复制和扩展。
