Abstract In this paper, we study differential infant and child mortality according to the origin of the mothers, natives of Madrid or immigrants, between 1916 and 1926. From 1880 to 1939, Madrid experienced spectacular demographic growth, with a massive influx of immigrants, mainly from the Castilian Plateau. Using the city’s records of births and deaths, which we linked for the study period, we demonstrate an important spatial heterogeneity in infant and child mortality across the city. Although the development of the town was planned in the 1860s, the infrastructure and the real estate market were overwhelmed by the continuous arrival of new inhabitants. Moreover, major investments in public health increased the gap between the wealthy districts and peripheral areas. These improvements deepened inequality. During years marked by the waves of the influenza pandemic, we isolate the impact of poverty, which threatened the survival of newborns through poor nutrition, deficient hygienic infrastructures and deplorable housing conditions. Such features explain the impressive association between summer and the risk of dying from enteritis, diarrhea and other diseases of the same type among weaned children. However, the mortality differentials between the offspring of native and migrant mothers were surprisingly small, which we explained in terms of behavioral adaptation to the large city and its mass society.
{"title":"Immigration, Poverty, and Infant and Child Mortality in the City of Madrid, 1916–1926","authors":"M. Oris, S. Mazzoni, Diego Ramiro-Fariñas","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.9","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, we study differential infant and child mortality according to the origin of the mothers, natives of Madrid or immigrants, between 1916 and 1926. From 1880 to 1939, Madrid experienced spectacular demographic growth, with a massive influx of immigrants, mainly from the Castilian Plateau. Using the city’s records of births and deaths, which we linked for the study period, we demonstrate an important spatial heterogeneity in infant and child mortality across the city. Although the development of the town was planned in the 1860s, the infrastructure and the real estate market were overwhelmed by the continuous arrival of new inhabitants. Moreover, major investments in public health increased the gap between the wealthy districts and peripheral areas. These improvements deepened inequality. During years marked by the waves of the influenza pandemic, we isolate the impact of poverty, which threatened the survival of newborns through poor nutrition, deficient hygienic infrastructures and deplorable housing conditions. Such features explain the impressive association between summer and the risk of dying from enteritis, diarrhea and other diseases of the same type among weaned children. However, the mortality differentials between the offspring of native and migrant mothers were surprisingly small, which we explained in terms of behavioral adaptation to the large city and its mass society.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49355153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper shows the effect that the medical expertise of medical practitioners had on the life chances of their children. We focus on infant and early childhood mortality. We reconstructed the life histories of the offspring of a group of around 2800 medical practitioners who were practicing in a high-mortality region in the Netherlands between 1850 and 1922, the period during which infant and child mortality in the Netherlands underwent the largest changes. The survival of their offspring is compared with that of a random sample of children from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands. Multilevel hazard analysis, using Cox proportional hazards models with shared frailty, is applied to study the effect of belonging to the medical profession on survival, in relation to the level of infant mortality in the regions where children were born. Within the group of medical practitioners, attention is paid to differences in children’s survival according to the level of medical knowledge of the fathers. Our statistical analyses show that the offspring of medical practitioners as a whole did have better survival prospects than children born to families without a father with a medical background. When medical practitioners had effective medical knowledge, measured by the period of graduation and the highest level of medical training reached, the positive effects on the survival of their children were even stronger.
{"title":"Infant and childhood death in the medical profession. Evidence from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Netherlands","authors":"F. van Poppel, P. Ekamper","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.7","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper shows the effect that the medical expertise of medical practitioners had on the life chances of their children. We focus on infant and early childhood mortality. We reconstructed the life histories of the offspring of a group of around 2800 medical practitioners who were practicing in a high-mortality region in the Netherlands between 1850 and 1922, the period during which infant and child mortality in the Netherlands underwent the largest changes. The survival of their offspring is compared with that of a random sample of children from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands. Multilevel hazard analysis, using Cox proportional hazards models with shared frailty, is applied to study the effect of belonging to the medical profession on survival, in relation to the level of infant mortality in the regions where children were born. Within the group of medical practitioners, attention is paid to differences in children’s survival according to the level of medical knowledge of the fathers. Our statistical analyses show that the offspring of medical practitioners as a whole did have better survival prospects than children born to families without a father with a medical background. When medical practitioners had effective medical knowledge, measured by the period of graduation and the highest level of medical training reached, the positive effects on the survival of their children were even stronger.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47870354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Reid, E. Garrett, H. Jaadla, K. Schürer, S. Rafferty
Abstract This paper takes, as its starting point, Preston and Haines’ observation in Fatal Years that social class was the most important influence on infant and child mortality in England and Wales in the early twentieth century. A subsequent study suggested that this could in part be due to the spatial distribution of the different classes across different types of place, and that some of the mortality differences by social class might actually reflect the contextual effects of healthy and unhealthy places. Although this line of argument has received a considerable amount of attention in health geography literature, it has rarely been examined for a specific historic period, and then only within particular urban areas. In this paper, we apply multi-level models to a complete count individual-level dataset of the 1911 census of England and Wales, comparing influences on infant and child mortality at the level of the individual couple and for two spatial levels. We find that although most variation in infant and child mortality operates at the individual level, there is also important variation at the two spatial levels and part of the mortality differences between social classes is better explained by the areas in which people lived rather than by their social class. A consideration of independent variables at all three levels suggests that different spatial scales capture different sorts of influences on early age mortality.
{"title":"Fatal Places? Contextual Effects on Infant and Child Mortality in Early Twentieth Century England and Wales","authors":"A. Reid, E. Garrett, H. Jaadla, K. Schürer, S. Rafferty","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.5","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper takes, as its starting point, Preston and Haines’ observation in Fatal Years that social class was the most important influence on infant and child mortality in England and Wales in the early twentieth century. A subsequent study suggested that this could in part be due to the spatial distribution of the different classes across different types of place, and that some of the mortality differences by social class might actually reflect the contextual effects of healthy and unhealthy places. Although this line of argument has received a considerable amount of attention in health geography literature, it has rarely been examined for a specific historic period, and then only within particular urban areas. In this paper, we apply multi-level models to a complete count individual-level dataset of the 1911 census of England and Wales, comparing influences on infant and child mortality at the level of the individual couple and for two spatial levels. We find that although most variation in infant and child mortality operates at the individual level, there is also important variation at the two spatial levels and part of the mortality differences between social classes is better explained by the areas in which people lived rather than by their social class. A consideration of independent variables at all three levels suggests that different spatial scales capture different sorts of influences on early age mortality.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42568947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Early in the nineteenth century, members in the UK Parliament (MPs) hardly ever debated education. When they did, it was nearly always in the context of aid for the religious instruction of the poor. Indeed, even by 1850, nearly two decades after the first Great Reform Act (1832), the Prime Minister Lord John Russell made the case that a system of compulsory state schooling would be immoral and un-British. Yet, by the ‘80s, MPs debating in Westminster routinely drew connections between schooling and the most critical social issues of the day: social-class mobility and equity, child welfare, national development, emigration, and the civil service, among others. What explains the expanding, and expansive, political uses that elite policymakers put to schooling? How did schooling and education take on such an aggrandized role in society for British statesmen? To address these questions, this paper combines natural language processing techniques, semantic network, discourse, and regression analyses to read and interpret the ∼1.1 million political speeches given in the UK Houses of Parliament during the long nineteenth century (1804–1913). In contrast to explanations emphasizing the direct role that economic, social, and political development as well as conflict played in the UK state’s historic expansion, this piece demonstrates how social scientization, the sweeping international epistemic movement that institutionalized and diffused functionalist social theory, created the context that made it possible for political elites to see and promote schooling as an effective policy instrument of greater cultural rationalization supporting the development of capitalist industrial society.
在19世纪早期,英国国会议员几乎从未讨论过教育问题。当他们这样做的时候,几乎总是在帮助穷人的宗教教育的背景下。事实上,即使到了1850年,也就是第一次大改革法案(1832年)出台近20年后,英国首相约翰·罗素勋爵(Lord John Russell)就提出,公立义务教育制度是不道德的,也不符合英国人的风格。然而,到了80年代,国会议员在威斯敏斯特的辩论中经常把学校教育与当时最关键的社会问题联系起来:社会阶层的流动性和公平、儿童福利、国家发展、移民和公务员制度等等。如何解释精英决策者对学校教育不断扩大的政治用途?对于英国政治家来说,学校教育是如何在社会中扮演如此重要的角色的?为了解决这些问题,本文结合了自然语言处理技术、语义网络、话语和回归分析来阅读和解释在漫长的19世纪(1804-1913年)英国议会大厦发表的约110万篇政治演讲。与强调经济、社会和政治发展以及冲突在英国历史扩张中发挥的直接作用的解释相反,这篇文章展示了社会科学化,即使功能主义社会理论制度化和扩散的席卷全球的认知运动,创造了一种环境,使政治精英们有可能看到并促进学校教育,将其作为一种有效的政策工具,促进文化合理化,支持资本主义工业社会的发展。
{"title":"Visions of deliverance: Social scientization, functionalism, and the expansive purposiveness of state schooling in nineteenth-century British parliamentary politics","authors":"D. Smith","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.13","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Early in the nineteenth century, members in the UK Parliament (MPs) hardly ever debated education. When they did, it was nearly always in the context of aid for the religious instruction of the poor. Indeed, even by 1850, nearly two decades after the first Great Reform Act (1832), the Prime Minister Lord John Russell made the case that a system of compulsory state schooling would be immoral and un-British. Yet, by the ‘80s, MPs debating in Westminster routinely drew connections between schooling and the most critical social issues of the day: social-class mobility and equity, child welfare, national development, emigration, and the civil service, among others. What explains the expanding, and expansive, political uses that elite policymakers put to schooling? How did schooling and education take on such an aggrandized role in society for British statesmen? To address these questions, this paper combines natural language processing techniques, semantic network, discourse, and regression analyses to read and interpret the ∼1.1 million political speeches given in the UK Houses of Parliament during the long nineteenth century (1804–1913). In contrast to explanations emphasizing the direct role that economic, social, and political development as well as conflict played in the UK state’s historic expansion, this piece demonstrates how social scientization, the sweeping international epistemic movement that institutionalized and diffused functionalist social theory, created the context that made it possible for political elites to see and promote schooling as an effective policy instrument of greater cultural rationalization supporting the development of capitalist industrial society.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42516750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article appraises kin availability and migration timing on French-Canadian child mortality in an early twentieth-century North American industrial city. The analysis is based on the exploitation of an original dataset constructed by linking the 1910 census data (IPUMS-Full Count) for Manchester, New Hampshire to Quebec Catholic marriage records (BALSAC) and geocoding census data at the household level (Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps). Our results suggest that the presence of maternal and paternal grandmothers in the city living in different households were associated with reduced child mortality and that French-Canadian women who arrived in the United States as children or young adults experienced higher child mortality compared to second-generation French Canadians and those who migrated at a later age.
摘要本文评估了20世纪初北美一个工业城市中法裔加拿大儿童死亡率的亲属可用性和移民时间。该分析基于对原始数据集的利用,该数据集通过将1910年新罕布什尔州曼彻斯特的人口普查数据(IPUMS Full Count)与魁北克天主教婚姻记录(BALSAC)以及家庭层面的地理编码人口普查数据(Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps)联系起来而构建。我们的研究结果表明,城市中居住在不同家庭的外祖母和外祖母与降低儿童死亡率有关,与第二代法裔加拿大人和年龄较晚移民的法裔加拿大人相比,童年或年轻时抵达美国的法裔加拿大妇女的儿童死亡率更高。
{"title":"Migration, Kinship and Child Mortality in Early Twentieth-Century North America","authors":"Marie-Ève Harton, J. Hacker, D. Gauvreau","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.11","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article appraises kin availability and migration timing on French-Canadian child mortality in an early twentieth-century North American industrial city. The analysis is based on the exploitation of an original dataset constructed by linking the 1910 census data (IPUMS-Full Count) for Manchester, New Hampshire to Quebec Catholic marriage records (BALSAC) and geocoding census data at the household level (Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps). Our results suggest that the presence of maternal and paternal grandmothers in the city living in different households were associated with reduced child mortality and that French-Canadian women who arrived in the United States as children or young adults experienced higher child mortality compared to second-generation French Canadians and those who migrated at a later age.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41695102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Aja Antoine-Jones, J. Feigenbaum, Lauren Hoehn‐Velasco, C. Muller, E. Wrigley-Field
Abstract In the first half of the twentieth century, deaths from infectious disease, especially among the very young, fell dramatically in American cities. However, as infant mortality fell and life expectancy rose, racial inequality in urban infectious disease mortality grew. In this paper, we show that the fall in mortality and the rise in racial inequality in mortality reflected two countervailing processes. The dramatic decline in infant mortality from waterborne diseases drastically reduced the total urban infectious disease mortality rate of both Black and white Americans while having a comparatively small effect on the total racial disparity in urban infectious disease mortality. In contrast, the unequal fall in tuberculosis mortality, particularly in the prime of life, widened racial inequality in infectious disease mortality in US cities.
{"title":"Racial Inequality in the Prime of Life: Infectious Disease Mortality in U.S. Cities, 1906–1933","authors":"Aja Antoine-Jones, J. Feigenbaum, Lauren Hoehn‐Velasco, C. Muller, E. Wrigley-Field","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the first half of the twentieth century, deaths from infectious disease, especially among the very young, fell dramatically in American cities. However, as infant mortality fell and life expectancy rose, racial inequality in urban infectious disease mortality grew. In this paper, we show that the fall in mortality and the rise in racial inequality in mortality reflected two countervailing processes. The dramatic decline in infant mortality from waterborne diseases drastically reduced the total urban infectious disease mortality rate of both Black and white Americans while having a comparatively small effect on the total racial disparity in urban infectious disease mortality. In contrast, the unequal fall in tuberculosis mortality, particularly in the prime of life, widened racial inequality in infectious disease mortality in US cities.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43937360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Ireland is often seen as an outlier within the western world in terms of demographic behavior. As a society it has also been noted for its religious fervor, including religious division, at least until fairly recently. Might there be connections historically between these two spheres? One intriguing area of enquiry relates to possible links between religious denomination and child mortality. We explore this possibility using individual-level data from the household schedules of the Irish Census of 1911. The study area is Belfast, Ireland’s leading industrial city, which allows for a wide range of occupational and social class differences. Combining regression techniques and the mortality index proposed by Preston and Haines (1991), we seek to tease out the relationship between child mortality and religious affiliation while controlling for a range of other explanatory variables. We show that religious identity is clearly associated with different infant and child mortality outcomes. Of the three major religious denominations, Catholics suffered the most from high infant mortality, Church of Ireland (Anglican) families were only a little better off, while the largest Protestant denomination, the Presbyterians, had the best infant mortality outcomes. These differences were related, in the main, to the varying socioeconomic composition of the three major religious denominations but religious affiliation also mattered in its own right.
{"title":"Religion and Child Death in Ireland’s Industrial Capital: Belfast 1911","authors":"F. Scalone, L. Pozzi, L. Kennedy","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.6","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ireland is often seen as an outlier within the western world in terms of demographic behavior. As a society it has also been noted for its religious fervor, including religious division, at least until fairly recently. Might there be connections historically between these two spheres? One intriguing area of enquiry relates to possible links between religious denomination and child mortality. We explore this possibility using individual-level data from the household schedules of the Irish Census of 1911. The study area is Belfast, Ireland’s leading industrial city, which allows for a wide range of occupational and social class differences. Combining regression techniques and the mortality index proposed by Preston and Haines (1991), we seek to tease out the relationship between child mortality and religious affiliation while controlling for a range of other explanatory variables. We show that religious identity is clearly associated with different infant and child mortality outcomes. Of the three major religious denominations, Catholics suffered the most from high infant mortality, Church of Ireland (Anglican) families were only a little better off, while the largest Protestant denomination, the Presbyterians, had the best infant mortality outcomes. These differences were related, in the main, to the varying socioeconomic composition of the three major religious denominations but religious affiliation also mattered in its own right.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49599127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract 2021 marked the 30-year anniversary of the publication Fatal Years: Child Mortality in the late Nineteenth-Century United States, a pioneering work in historical demography by Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines. This special issue showcases the current state of historical mortality studies through a collection of articles originally presented at two commemorative sessions at the 2021 meeting of the Social Science History Association. It provides new and more nuanced evidence on several of the major themes of Fatal Years in terms of the mortality experience and includes studies of a wide range of contexts, from North America, to Ireland, England and Wales, and continental Europe. They all bring new evidence and leverage the dramatic development that has taken place in availability of large-scale micro-level data in the 30 years since Fatal Years was published. This introduction first provides some background to the collection and then summarizes the main findings from the different articles included. Preston and Haines provide a coda to this collection with a short reflection article on researching and writing Fatal Years.
{"title":"Introduction to Fatal Years 30 Years Later: New Research On Child Mortality in the Past Special Issue","authors":"M. Dribe, J. Hacker","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2023.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.8","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 2021 marked the 30-year anniversary of the publication Fatal Years: Child Mortality in the late Nineteenth-Century United States, a pioneering work in historical demography by Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines. This special issue showcases the current state of historical mortality studies through a collection of articles originally presented at two commemorative sessions at the 2021 meeting of the Social Science History Association. It provides new and more nuanced evidence on several of the major themes of Fatal Years in terms of the mortality experience and includes studies of a wide range of contexts, from North America, to Ireland, England and Wales, and continental Europe. They all bring new evidence and leverage the dramatic development that has taken place in availability of large-scale micro-level data in the 30 years since Fatal Years was published. This introduction first provides some background to the collection and then summarizes the main findings from the different articles included. Preston and Haines provide a coda to this collection with a short reflection article on researching and writing Fatal Years.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45063132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Welfare ministries are key institutions of modern nation-states. However, we still lack knowledge about when and why national welfare ministries were established. In this paper, we argue that both the First and Second world wars were major driving forces behind the establishment of independent welfare ministries. To test our argument, we introduce a novel dataset on the establishment of welfare-related ministries in 30 countries. Our empirical findings suggest that the establishment of independent welfare ministries was a product of wartime turbulence and the political, economic and social shockwaves set off especially by World War I, which affected many countries at the same time. Considering alternative explanations such as the Spanish Flu, the Bolshevik Revolution or the emergence of new nation-states, we argue that war triggered multiple, interrelated and chronologically staggered transnational events and transformations that had major effects on the social welfare systems of the countries involved. In this light, we conclude that World War I was ultimately the root cause behind the establishment of welfare ministries.
{"title":"World Wars and the Establishment of Welfare Ministries","authors":"K. Petersen, Carina Schmitt, Herbert Obinger","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2022.50","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2022.50","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Welfare ministries are key institutions of modern nation-states. However, we still lack knowledge about when and why national welfare ministries were established. In this paper, we argue that both the First and Second world wars were major driving forces behind the establishment of independent welfare ministries. To test our argument, we introduce a novel dataset on the establishment of welfare-related ministries in 30 countries. Our empirical findings suggest that the establishment of independent welfare ministries was a product of wartime turbulence and the political, economic and social shockwaves set off especially by World War I, which affected many countries at the same time. Considering alternative explanations such as the Spanish Flu, the Bolshevik Revolution or the emergence of new nation-states, we argue that war triggered multiple, interrelated and chronologically staggered transnational events and transformations that had major effects on the social welfare systems of the countries involved. In this light, we conclude that World War I was ultimately the root cause behind the establishment of welfare ministries.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42091319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This multi-method study uses statistical and comparative-historical investigations to find that abortion values shape genetic counseling practices across societies. Genetic counselors and genetically interested social scientists have long questioned, but never systematically demonstrated, whether this relationship exists. Genetic counseling data are drawn from cross-national surveys of genetic counselors (n = 2,906) from the mid-1990s, the key historical moment after this profession was globally established but before potentially confounding transnational professional effects. Data focus on Trisomy 21, severe open spina bifida, and Huntington’s chorea. Abortion data are drawn from a new comparative-historical investigation of abortion attitudes in 36 countries based on law, frequency of policy debate, incidence rates, and public opinion polling. The key overall finding is that the more controversial abortion is within a society, the less directive genetic counselors are willing to be, whereas the less controversial abortion is, the more directive the counseling. Polynomial regressions, t-tests, likelihood ratios, and Wald tests provide statistical evidence for the relationship observed through qualitative clustering.
{"title":"Abortion and Directive Genetic Counseling","authors":"M. Kearney","doi":"10.1017/ssh.2022.43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2022.43","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This multi-method study uses statistical and comparative-historical investigations to find that abortion values shape genetic counseling practices across societies. Genetic counselors and genetically interested social scientists have long questioned, but never systematically demonstrated, whether this relationship exists. Genetic counseling data are drawn from cross-national surveys of genetic counselors (n = 2,906) from the mid-1990s, the key historical moment after this profession was globally established but before potentially confounding transnational professional effects. Data focus on Trisomy 21, severe open spina bifida, and Huntington’s chorea. Abortion data are drawn from a new comparative-historical investigation of abortion attitudes in 36 countries based on law, frequency of policy debate, incidence rates, and public opinion polling. The key overall finding is that the more controversial abortion is within a society, the less directive genetic counselors are willing to be, whereas the less controversial abortion is, the more directive the counseling. Polynomial regressions, t-tests, likelihood ratios, and Wald tests provide statistical evidence for the relationship observed through qualitative clustering.","PeriodicalId":46528,"journal":{"name":"Social Science History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48963619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}