The life expectancy of medical professionals in the Netherlands, sixteenth to twentieth centuries

Rising life expectancy has been suggested as a determining factor behind the start of modern economic growth. On the basis of information relating to elite groups, economic historians have thus questioned the idea, prevalent among most demographers, that life expectancy remained quite stable until around 1800. There is still a scarcity of data on the long-term evolution of life expectancy able to support this claim. We present data on medical professionals in the Netherlands to study the evolution of life expectancy at age 25 in birth cohorts from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries... Mehr ...