Infant Mortality Clustering in Nineteenth-Century Denmark

Mads Linnet Perner, University of Copenhagen

This paper examines the scope of infant mortality clustering in a nineteenth-century Danish context. Clustering refers to a skewed distribution of the mortality burden, with a high proportion of infant deaths taking place in a relatively small subset of families. There are several examples of infant mortality clustering in nineteenth-century Europe, but we lack knowledge about the role played by clustering in shaping spatial and social mortality inequalities. This paper focuses on the case of Denmark during the nineteenth century and uses large-scale individual-level linked data from the Link-Lives project. Denmark had a relatively low infant mortality rate, but there were significant regional differences. The paper attempts to uncover the role played by clustering in shaping those disparities.

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 Presented in Session 153. Methods and Mortality in Historical Demography