Continuity and Change
Volume 27, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 433-459

Immigration, wealth and the 'mortality plateau' in emergent industrial cities of nineteenth-century Massachusetts (Review)

Leonard S.H. , Beemer J.K. , Anderton D.L.
  • a Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan, United States
  • b Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, United States
  • c Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina, United States

Abstract

The mortality transition in Western Europe and the United States encompassed a much more complex set of conditions and experiences than earlier thought. Our research addresses the complex set of relationships among growing urban communities, family wealth, immigration and mortality in New England by examining individual-level, sociodemographic mortality correlates during the nineteenth-century mortality plateau and its early twentieth-century decline. In contrast to earlier theories that proposed a more uniform mortality transition, we offer an alternative hypothesis that focuses on the impact of family wealth and immigration on individual-level mortality during the early stages of the mortality transition in Northampton and Holyoke, Massachusetts. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012.

Author Keywords

[No Keywords available]

Index Keywords

urban population England United Kingdom nineteenth century New England Massachusetts Holyoke Northamptonshire demographic history Northampton United States immigration mortality
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84880246881&doi=10.1017%2fS0268416012000215&partnerID=40&md5=1bf29af22ad0bdea838f2d7f5552051c
DOI: 10.1017/S0268416012000215
ISSN: 02684160
Cited by: 5
Original Language: English