Papers by Gretchen Condran
Social Science History, 2008
Historically, public health workers, physicians, and reformers have used the infant mortality rat... more Historically, public health workers, physicians, and reformers have used the infant mortality rate as an indicator of the goodness of a society-its general welfare, the justness of its political system, the efficacy of its public works, the benevolence of its powerful; a high rate of death among the very young was an index of a community's shame. These views of the infant mortality rate as reflecting general characteristics of a society were widely displayed in the second half of the nineteenth century even as most disease entities were becoming more narrowly defined and ordinarily linked not to the nature of society or individual predisposition but to specific pathological organisms. Using Philadelphia as a case study, we examine the history of the infant mortality rate from 1870 through 1920, both the technical aspects of its calculation and its use as an indicator of broad societal problems and a catalyst for policy. Our emphasis is not on explaining the trends in the death rates of the very young but on the uses and meanings given to the infant mortality rate during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century specifically as they related to three efforts to lower infant death rates-removing infants from the city, improving the supply of milk, and establishing child hygiene programs.
Demography, Feb 1, 1982
This article examines the decline in mortality which occurred in Philadelphia in the late ninetee... more This article examines the decline in mortality which occurred in Philadelphia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Age-and cause-specific mortality rates accounting for the decline are isolated and the relative importance of several variables in explaining the reduction of overall mortality levels is assessed. By using small areas within the city we are able to establish the impact of particular innovations on specific causes of death.
The American Historical Review, Dec 1, 1994
The intercensal cohort method of data evaluation was used to answer 2 questions: how good are the... more The intercensal cohort method of data evaluation was used to answer 2 questions: how good are the data on deaths and populations at older ages; and what role does age misreporting play in distorting them. The results reported were obtained from a larger project designed to evaluate population and vital registration data needed to estimate old age mortality levels. The intercensal cohort method can be applied to empirical data with a few adjustments. The point of the adjustments is to make population and death data refer to identically-defined cohorts. It has been possible to test the effects of these adjustments on the ratios with 2 data sets containing more detail than is usually available. The 1st adjustment was tested with data from Swedens population register. The small error which results when censuses are not taken at the beginning of the year can be illustrated with Japanese data. For many countries data are good as measured by consistency until very high ages. The patterns o...
Annales de démographie historique, 1988
La baisse de la mortalite observee en Occident a la fin du XIXe et au debut du XXe siecles est-el... more La baisse de la mortalite observee en Occident a la fin du XIXe et au debut du XXe siecles est-elle le resultat d'actions deliberees menees par des medecins, des responsables de services de sante publique et des individus, ou tout simplement le corollaire de l'industrialisation et de l'accroissement du revenu moyen par tete ? Voila l'un des sujets les plus controverses en demographie historique. L'etude comparative de l'evolution des taux de mortalite par âge et cause pour un certain nombre de villes, entre les sous- populations de ces villes, et entre regions rurales et urbaines, amene l'auteur a conclure que les interventions directes ont joue un role majeur dans la baisse de la mortalite pour certaines causes. Il etablit une relation entre les services municipaux crees au cours de cette periode, en particulier pour l'approvisionnement des villes en eau potable et la distribution de lait propre, et l'evolution des taux de mortalite par âge et cause.
PubMed, 1994
«Fatal Years» de Preston (S.) et Haines (M.) dresse une constat precis du taux de mortalite infan... more «Fatal Years» de Preston (S.) et Haines (M.) dresse une constat precis du taux de mortalite infantile aux Etats-Unis a la fin du 19 e siecle
Mortality at advanced ages has aroused interest as increasing numbers of people of many national ... more Mortality at advanced ages has aroused interest as increasing numbers of people of many national populations achieve longevity but certain inaccuracies require mathematical descriptions of the age patterns of mortality. The Gompertz model assumes that the rate of increase in death rates is constant with age but does not fit very old ages. Data were gathered on deaths for 9 low mortality countries from national statistics. Death rates for countries and time periods were estimated to develop a standard mortality pattern and to identify deviations. Females in the Netherlands and Norway and males in Spain had lower average mortality levels than their counterparts in Sweden. The revised model life tables for older ages devised by Coale and Guo (1988) were designed to replace the life tables for the West South and East regions. For females the West and East regional models provided the closet fit to the standard developed although mortality levels at 75-90 were higher compared to younger ages. In the South model mortality at older ages was higher than at younger ages while in the North it was reversed. The results were similar for males. Females in several English-speaking countries had values of .92 to .98 but the male value of approximately 1.00 matched the standard. For females Australia Canada and New Zealand showed a downward deviation while Austria Finland and Italy showed the opposite. Hungary Spain and Sweden corresponded to the standard. In Belgium and Japan mortality varied little at older ages compared to younger ages. In England and Wales male mortality was higher at older ages relative to the standard. Undoubtedly mortality at old ages has declined rapidly in the past 3 decades as people with health impairments have survived who would have died earlier early life incidence of infectious diseases was reduced and better nutrition has been available. Pronounced cohort effects in any country for either sex were absent.
Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 1981
The authors describe the results of efforts to link information on black decedents from the 1880-... more The authors describe the results of efforts to link information on black decedents from the 1880-1881 death register of Philadelphia to the 1880 U.S. census using a hand-linkage procedures with regard to the numbers of links and the biases of the linked files produced by each (ANNOTATION)
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1989
Social Science History
the editors, and the publisher of Social Science History gratefully acknowledge the University of... more the editors, and the publisher of Social Science History gratefully acknowledge the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for its support of the journal.
Human Ecology, 1978
In this paper we examine the decline in mortality rates by cause of death in U.S. cities during t... more In this paper we examine the decline in mortality rates by cause of death in U.S. cities during the last decade of the. 19th century. Causes of death are grouped according to their probable relationship to specific public health measures. The reduction which occurred in the death rates from some diseases, e.g., typhoid and diarrheal diseases, can probably be attributed
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1991
... Petersburg) 1905-1909 1910-1914 I922-I924 Galicia I85I Vilna I897-I907 Lvov I89I-I892 (Lember... more ... Petersburg) 1905-1909 1910-1914 I922-I924 Galicia I85I Vilna I897-I907 Lvov I89I-I892 (Lemberg ... S. Billings, "Vital Statistics of the Jews in the United States," Census Bulletin, 19 (30 ... mistaken view, he argued, resulted from selection bias; descriptions of the Lower East Side in ...
Demography, 1984
The schedule of mortality by age for Philadelphia’s 1880 population classified by sex and race sh... more The schedule of mortality by age for Philadelphia’s 1880 population classified by sex and race showed aberrations from Coale and Demeny West, South, and North model life tables. Deviations from standard age patterns of mortality were especially pronounced for the black population. The question addressed in this paper is whether the alternative age patterns of mortality are produced by underenumeration in the 1880census or by actual variations in the age–specific mortality experience. The conclusion was reached that the underenumeration of the urban population, especially the blacks, exceeds estimates for the national population. In addition, the results indicated that the black population faced risks of dying that genuinely differed from standard age patterns. An attempt to use a Brass logit model to generalize the black mortality experience met with success for females but not for males.
Demography, 2011
Logo Springer. Search Menu. Search Options: ...
American Journal of Sociology, 1988
The association between the sex of children and their parents' risk of marital disruption is... more The association between the sex of children and their parents' risk of marital disruption is examined using the June 1980 Current Population Survey. The finding is that sons reduce the risk of marital disruption by 9% more than do daughters. This difference holds across ...
Uploads
Papers by Gretchen Condran