Beyond Infant Mortality: Gender and Stillbirth in Reproductive Mortality Before the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Though it has been the largest component of reproductive mortality since its statutory registration in 1928, stillbirth has received little attention from historical demographers, who have relied on the more orthodox indicator of early human survival changes – ‘infant mortality’. The exclusion of stillbirth hampers demographic analysis, underestimates progress in newborn vitality, and over-privileges post-natal causes in theoretical explanation. A case is made for estimating stillbirth before 1928 as a ratio of early neonatal death, and for employing perinatal mortality as an historical indicator of female health status. The long-run trend of reproductive mortality (encompassing mature foetal and live born infant death during the first eleven months) reveals a substantial decline in perinatal causes in the first industrial century (1750–1850), implying a major concurrent improvement in the nutritional status of child bearers. Reproductive mortality is a more complete indicator of death in infancy. It offers demographers a means of fracturing the fertility versus mortality dualism and a potential purchase on gender as a demographic variable, while re-opening the case on mortality in the demographic dynamic of the world we have lost.