Health and Mortality in the 19th-Century Rural U.S.: the Second Epidemiological Transition in Madison County, NY

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Since the mid-19th century, many populations have experienced changes in cause-of-death structures (often called the second epidemiological transition) characterized by a decline in infectious disease deaths and an increase in deaths from non-communicable diseases. This shift is associated with a demographic transition toward increased life expectancies. There is evidence that the transition occurs earlier in urban areas than surrounding rural areas and more rapidly in countries with the highest levels of urbanization. However, the epidemiological transition remains understudied in rural areas. We approach the question of how the transition progressed in rural areas through quantitative and qualitative analyses of mortality schedules from Federal and State census records from 1850-1880 for the primarily rural, agriculturally based Madison County in upstate New York. Our preliminary results suggest substantial increases in life expectancy from the 1850s – 1880s, which in previous work has been shown to be associated with the second epidemiological transition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• 2024 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow