Social inequality, mortality and causes of death during the epidemiological transition in Copenhagen, 1861-1940

This project takes advantage of a set of newly digitized historical sources to address a central topic in social and economic history: how social standing affected the health and life expectancy of individuals living during the epidemiological transition. The epidemiological transition describes the shift in populations from high mortality due to infectious diseases to longer life expectancies with chronic non-communicable diseases becoming the primary causes of death. This project seeks to describe the form of the transition in Copenhagen, and aims to examine whether high status groups benefited earlier, by studying the overall and cause-specific decline of mortality by social standing. It draws on two newly transcribed sources from the Copenhagen City Archives: the Burial Records (1861-1940) and the Police Register (1892-1923).