期刊名称：Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History / Oxford University
出版年度：2010
卷号：2010
出版社：Oxford
摘要：This paper details the statistical sources, methods and findings that underpin
the demographic evidence offered by Johansson (2010) in support of her
thesis regarding “Europe’s first knowledge-driven mortality transition,”
namely the pronounced and sustained rise in the expectations of life that took
place among the 17th
and early 18th
century birth cohorts of members of
Britain’s royal families. The consequent interest in exposing the existence of
systematic demographic effects of changes in the medical treatments and
healthcare regimens received by this elite makes it germane to establish the
statistical significance of a particular pattern of inter-cohort changes in the
royals’ mortality experience – namely, one whose timing and age- and sex-
specificity make it plausibly attributable to the historical improvements in the
medical knowledge and practice of their doctors, as has been documented by
Johansson (1999, 2010). Complete genealogical data for the members of
Britain’s royal families born c. 1500 – c.1800, due to Weir (1996), permits
construction of cohort life expectancy at birth and at age 25 for royal males,
royal females, as well as for the small number of male monarchs, their female
consorts and the queens. Inter-cohort comparisons of life table mortality
schedules are obtained by using the 5-year average survival rate distributions
for the successive birth cohorts to estimate for each cohort the parameters of
Anson’s (1991) general model of age-specific mortality hazard rates – the
empirical probability of dying within 5 years of age x, conditional on having
survived to that age. A variety of tests show the gross changes of interest to be
statistically significant. The discussion contrasts the mortality transition
among the royal families’ members with the contemporaneous demographic
experience of rural and urban segments of the English population at large.
