Spatial disparities at death. Age-, sex- and disease-specific mortality in the districts of Belgium at the beginning of the twentieth century

At the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy at birth was much lower in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, than in Wallonia, the southern part of the country. In the literature, this excess mortality is mainly attributed to high levels of infant mortality caused by bad feeding practices and low-quality drinking water. The regional variability of mortality risks at other ages during this period has received less attention. In this article, we reconstruct age-, sex- and disease-specific death rates for the 41 districts of Belgium around the year 1910. To show the mortality var... Mehr ...