‘Til death do us part? Effects of marital status on patterns of mortality in 19th-century Upstate New York

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in 19th-Century Farming Communities During Westward Expansion, from New England to the Mountain West" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Numerous studies of 20th- and 21st-century populations have produced evidence of a health-promoting effect of marriage. Fewer studies have examined this effect in older historical populations. In an effort to contribute to our understanding of the potentially historically- and culturally-contingent nature of the effect of marriage on health and demography, we analyze mortality schedules from Federal and State census records c. 1850-1880 for the primarily rural, agriculturally based Madison County in upstate New York. Specifically, we use Kaplan-Meier survival, Cox proportional hazards, and Chi-square analyses of data on age, sex, cause of death, and marital status. Our results reveal a substantial, significant effect of marital status on survivorship and risks of mortality for both men and women (i.e., higher survivorship and lower hazards of death for married individuals). Analysis of proportionate mortality indicates that single individuals suffered significantly higher rates of infectious disease and external causes of death (e.g., accidental injury, poisoning, homicide, and suicide), and married people experienced higher rates of non-communicable disease, in line with expectations based on survivorship. However, we also find that married men experienced a more dramatic benefit with respect to health and mortality compared to married women.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Living and Dying in 19th-Century Farming Communities During Westward Expansion, from New England to the Mountain West

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51607