This paper is an extensive revision and expansion of Working Paper No.1402. It centers on a new time series of life expectations in the U.S. since 1720, which has been constructed from the NBER/CPE pilot sample of genealogies. Native-born Americans achieved remarkably long life expectations toward the end ofthe eighteenth century but then experienced a 70-year decline. A new rise began late in the 1850s 'out it was not until 1930 that the Americans again achieved the level of life expectation that was attained c.1790. Second, time series on average adult stature of national populations in North America and Europe are used as indexes of nutritional status (not diet alone but diet net of prior claims). These series are shown to be highly correlated with the series on e10 and other measures of mortality. It is estimated that improvements in nutritional status may have accounted for as much as four-tenths of the secular decline in mortality rates, but nearly all of this effect was concentrated in the reduction of infant mortality. Additional results include an assessment of the effect of toxic substances on the mortality rates of the English peerage; an estimate of the distribution of shortfalls in English supplies of food between 1540 and 1871, which reveals that famines were due primarily to social misallocations of food rather than to large declines in supply; and adjustments of conventional estimates of U.S. per capita income for the increase in mortality, which reduce the rate of economic growth between1790 and 1860 by nearly 40 percent.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
1802.
Length: Date of creation: Jan 1986 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1802
Note: DAE Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)