Time Trends in Social Class Mortality Differentials in the Netherlands, 1820-1920: An Assessment Based on Indirect Estimation Techniques

The question whether socioeconomic status gradients in adult mortality have changed over a broad historical period has become an important political and theoretical issue but is hard to test. In this article we study long-term trends in social inequality in adult mortality by using data for 2 (of the 11) provinces of the Netherlands for the period 1812–1922. We apply indirect estimation techniques, which have been developed for the analysis of mortality patterns in countries with deficient data. Our article shows that indeed there was a clear social class gradient in mortality, with the elite... Mehr ...