A View of Early Modern Trends in Longevity Derived from Data on European Scholars

In this study, we present data that overcome such weaknesses and use these data to reanalyze the timing of mortality improvements among the European elite. Furthermore, using information about relative status within the elite, we investigate whether differences in socioeconomic position were already influencing mortality when secular changes in mortality first started, or whether this pattern is more recent. Finally, we exploit information about the scientific fields in which the scholars in our database were working to examine whether there were leaders or laggards by discipline. A particular focus of our analysis is on medicine, which may have had both positive and negative effects on longevity, depending on whether the benefits of medical knowledge offset the added hazards resulting from exposure to pathogens. We build a large, new data set with more than 30,000 scholars covering the sixteenth to the early twentieth century to analyze the timing of the mortality decline and the heterogeneity in life expectancy gains among scholars in the Holy Roman Empire. The large sample size, well-defined entry into the risk group, and heterogeneity in social status are among the key advantages of the new database. After recovering from a severe mortality crisis in the seventeenth century, life expectancy among scholars started to increase as early as in the eighteenth century, well before the Industrial Revolution. Our finding that members of scientific academies - an elite grou...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs