̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - demographics

Cambridge experts bust myths about family, sex, marriage and work in English history

ta385 — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 23:01:00 +0000

Sex before marriage was unusual in the past – Myth! In some periods, over half of all brides were already pregnant when they got married.

̽��ֱ��rich have always outlived the poor –Myth! Before the 20th century the evidence for a survival advantage of wealth is mixed. In England, babies of agricultural labourers (the poorest workers) had a better chance of reaching their first birthday than infants in wealthy families, and life expectancy was no higher for aristocrats than for the rest of the population. These patterns contrast strongly with national and international patterns today, where wealth confers a clear survival advantage everywhere and at all ages.

In the past people (particularly women) married in their teens – Myth! In reality, women married in their mid-20s, men around 2.5 years older. Apart from a few decades in the early 1800s, the only time since 1550 that the average age of first marriage for women fell below 24 was during the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

These are just some of the stubborn myths busted by researchers from ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Campop). Their Top of the CamPops blog (www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog) went live on 11 July 2024, with new posts being added every week. ̽��ֱ��blog will reveal ‘60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages’.

̽��ֱ��initiative marks the influential research group’s 60th anniversary. Founded in 1964 by Peter Laslett and Tony Wrigley to conduct data-driven research into family and demographic history, Campop has contributed to hundreds of research articles and books, and made the history of England’s population the best understood in the world.

Earlier this year, the group made headlines when Professor Leigh Shaw-Taylor revealed that the Industrial Revolution in Britain started 100 years earlier than traditionally assumed.

Professor Alice Reid, Director of Campop and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, said: “Assumptions about lives, families and work in the past continue to influence attitudes today. But many of these are myths. Over the last 60 years, our researchers have gone through huge amounts of data to set the record straight. This blog shares some of our most surprising and important discoveries for a broad audience.”

Myth: Until the 20th century, few people lived beyond the age of 40. Reality: Actually, people who survived the first year or two of life had a reasonable chance of living until 70.

Myth: Childbirth was really dangerous for women in the past, and carried a high chance of death. Reality: ̽��ֱ��risk of death during or following childbirth was certainly higher than it is now, but was far lower than many people suppose.

Myth: Families in the past generally lived in extended, multigenerational households. Reality: Young couples generally formed a new household on marriage, reducing the prevalence of multi-generational households. As today, the living circumstances of old people varied. Many continued to live as couples or on their own, some lived with their children, whilst very few lived in institutions.

Myth: Marital titles for women arose from men’s desire to distinguish available women from those who were already ‘owned’. Reality: Both ‘miss’ and ‘mrs’ are shortened forms of ‘mistress’, which was a status designation indicating a gentlewoman or employer. Mrs had no necessary connection to marriage until circa 1900 (and even then, there was an exception for upper servants).

Myth: Famine and starvation were common in the past. Reality: Not in England! Here, the poor laws and a ‘low pressure’ demographic system provided a safety net. This helps to explain why hunger and famine are absent from English fairy tales but common in the folklore of most European societies.

Myth: Women working (outside the home) is a late 20th century phenomenon. Reality: Most women in the past engaged in gainful employment, both before and after marriage

Myth: Women take their husbands’ surnames because of patriarchal norms. Reality: ̽��ֱ��practice of taking a husband’s surname developed in England from the peculiarly restrictive rule of ‘coverture’ in marital property. Elsewhere in Europe, where the husband managed the wife’s property but did not own it, women retained their birth names until circa 1900.

Myth: People rarely moved far from their place of birth in the past. Reality: Migration was actually quite common – a village population could change more than half its members from one decade to the next. Rural to urban migration enabled the growth of cities, and since people migrated almost exclusively to find work, the sex ratio of cities can indicate what kind of work was available.

Campop’s Professor Amy Erickson said: “People, not least politicians, often refer to history to nudge us to do something, or stop doing something. Not all of this history is accurate, and repeating myths about sex, marriage, family and work can be quite harmful. They can put unfair pressure on people, create guilt and raise false expectations, while also misrepresenting the lives of our ancestors.”

On World Population Day, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers bust some of the biggest myths about life in England since the Middle Ages, challenging assumptions about everything from sex before marriage to migration and the health/wealth gap.

Assumptions about lives, families and work in the past continue to influence attitudes today. But many of these are myths.

Alice Reid

Black and white photograph of a family lined up against a wall in E W Hope, Report on the physical welfare of mothers and children (Liverpool, ̽��ֱ��Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1917), volume 1

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Mind Over Chatter: ̽��ֱ��future of reproduction

ns480 — Thu, 27 May 2021 12:41:58 +0000

Season 2, episode 6

Our reproductive capabilities are changing in exciting ways, altering our fundamental understanding of fertility, reproduction, and even parenthood.

In this episode of Mind Over Chatter, we ask our guests what the consequences of novel reproductive technologies are likely to be, and how they will impact the future of human reproduction.

Subscribe to Mind Over Chatter

We cover topics ranging from egg-freezing, so-called ‘three-parent-babies, and the importance of studying the embryonic development of primates.

Historical demographer, Dr Alice Reid, who researches fertility, mortality and health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tells us how reproduction has changed over the last 200 years and how it has been influenced by improvements in gender equality, as well as discussing the likely demographic impact of assisted reproduction.

Dr Lucy Van de Wiel, whose research focuses on the social and cultural analysis of assisted reproductive technologies such as egg freezing, introduces the important ways in which reproductive technologies must be considered in the context of wide social and political issues.

Finally, Dr Thorsten Boroviak shares his cutting-edge research on developing new reproductive technologies – the ability to generate your own egg or sperm from any cell of your body – and the importance of studying the embryonic development of primates.

Key points:

[2:10]- change of human reproduction over the last 200 years

[5:45]- egg freezing and changing meaning of what it means to be ‘fertile’

[12:05]- higher levels of gender equity can produce higher levels of fertility

[23:19]- generating eggs and sperms from any human cell

[24:02]- can a man produce an egg?

[40:37]- when should one freeze their eggs?

[64:54]- reproductive justice and reproductive equity. Ensuring reproductive autonomy while ensuring non-exploitation

[65:59]- Final question: what is the most exciting thing that will happen to humankind in the future?

Mind Over Chatter: ̽��ֱ��Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Podcast

A brief history of ageing

bjb42 — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 15:51:49 +0000

Over the past 200 years, life expectancy at birth has doubled from around 40 years to over 80 years in countries like the UK. In some countries such as France, where 250 years ago life expectancy at birth was slightly over 25 years, life expectancy has increased by almost 55 years. Although these trends have been well documented, there remains much disagreement between biological scientists and demographers (who study the structure and dynamics of populations) about their meaning. ̽��ֱ��question is: can we use these trends to predict future developments in life expectancy?

A biological ceiling?

On one side of the debate are those who believe that under favourable conditions the typical human has a characteristic maximal lifespan and that we are now approaching the uppermost limits to life expectancy. ̽��ֱ��main argument in favour of this stance is the notion that increasing life expectancy is beyond the reach of Darwinian forces of natural selection because almost all mortality now occurs after the age of reproduction. A further argument for having reached an upper limit rests on the fact that the reduction in infant mortality rates over the centuries in many societies has already brought a huge increase to lifespan, and further improvements in medical care won’t now make such a significant impact on this age group.

However, each time a natural limit has been suggested, it has been exceeded. In the 1920s, eminent demographers thought that the maximal lifespan was a little under 65 years of age (life expectancy in the USA at the time was around 57 years). Distinguished analysts as late as 1990 declared that life expectancy would not exceed 85 years unless major breakthroughs were to occur in controlling the fundamental rate of ageing. This cap was surpassed by Japanese women in 1996, and a number of other countries have now joined Japan in passing this upper limit.

̽��ֱ��historical perspective

Demographers who look at life expectancy trends over time, and give considerable weight to the findings from historical study, expect there to be continued improvements to life expectancy. Historical analysis undertaken collaboratively in the Department of Geography in Cambridge and at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, has focused on life expectancy by looking at records dating back to the 1840s in a large number of countries for which estimates can be made. These data have been used to chart trends over a period from 1840 to the present day.

In 1840, life expectancy was highest among Swedish women, who lived on average 45 years. Today, as mentioned earlier, the longest life expectancy is to be found among Japanese women, whose lives on average exceed 85 years. This improvement appears to have been steady, with an average increase in life expectancy of three months every year until the present day. Record male longevity has risen rather more slowly yet still shows the same linear rise, with Japanese men now holding the record for the longest male survivors at an average age of just over 78 years.

In England, female adult mortality has been estimated from Anglican parish registers and genealogies relating to the Peerage, which reveal an increase in adult survivorship that began as early as 1700. Interestingly, this rise was experienced by both high- and low-income members of society, suggesting that at least initially the process derived from health-related changes rather than from a rise in economic well-being.

Future longevity

Historical demographic analysis has exposed a line of challenging enquiry: will life expectancy continue to rise, as predicted from the previous trends, or are we reaching a biologically determined ceiling? It would be rash on the basis of the historical trends to promote the idea of the attainment of eternity among humans or even an untrammelled route to a life expectancy at birth of 100 years by 2060, as some enthusiasts have done. Nonetheless, it is certain that centenarians will soon become commonplace individuals in our midst.

A significant part of the improvement in average life expectancy, certainly before 1950, was achieved by improvements in survivorship among the youngest age group; behavioural changes associated with health enhancement, such as a reduction in smoking, will also have contributed in recent decades. However, looking to the future, a fundamental finding of the historical analysis is that there is no sign of a levelling off of rates of improvement at the oldest ages. In fact, these rates of improvement would appear to be rising rather than levelling. It is perhaps noteworthy that, following a sequence of years when they had to raise their maximum life expectancy repeatedly, the United Nations has at last abandoned the practice of imposing such limits in their population projections.

Implications

Forecasts of life expectancy are used in public and private decision-making to determine future pension benefits, healthcare and social services. Increases in life expectancy of just a few years can produce very large changes in the numbers of the old and particularly the very old. And a continued reduction in mortality among the oldest old suggests that longevity increases will be larger and population ageing will be more rapid than many high-income countries expect, which could have major implications for social security and medical care systems.

Perhaps one of the most significant implications of historical demographic analysis is that it has exposed the danger of believing that the expectation of life cannot rise much above its current uppermost level. As the so-called ‘baby boomer’ generation ages, longevity is becoming a highly significant debate. Whichever school of thought – those who believe the ceiling has been reached and those who do not – proves to be correct, the result will have enormous implications for how societies evolve, and manage their health and welfare issues, in the future.

For more information, please contact the author Professor Richard Smith (rms20@cam.ac.uk),who is Director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure within the Department of Geography.

As life expectancy increases, what can historical analysis of longevity tell us about limits to the human lifespan?

dark_ghetto28 from Flickr

sweet old kiss

Life expectancy today

̽��ֱ��average life expectancy from birth for men and women in the UK is currently 76.6 and 81.1 years, respectively. ̽��ֱ��world’s highest life expectancies can be found in Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Japan; Japanese men and women live an average of 78.7 and 85.5 years, respectively. Africa has some of the world’s lowest life expectancies: Swaziland (37.6 years), Botswana (41.5 years) and Lesotho (41.5 years). Source: World Health Organization statistical information.

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