Nobel laureate Robert Fogel's compelling new study examines health, nutrition and technology from 1700 to 2100. Although throughout most of human history, chronic malnutrition has been the norm, a synergy between improvements in productive technology and human physiology has enabled humans to more than double their average longevity and to increase their body size by over fifty percent over the past three centuries. Larger, healthier humans have contributed to the acceleration of economic growth and technological change, resulting in reduced economic inequality, declining hours of work and a...

In rural England prior to the Industrial Revolution people generally married when they were not busy with work. Parish registers of marriage therefore form an important and innovative source for the study of economic change in this period. Dr Kussmaul employs marriage dates to identify three main patterns of work and risk (arable, pastoral and rural industrial) and more importantly to show the long-term changes in economic activities across 542 English parishes from the beginning of national marriage registration in 1538. No single historical landscape emerges. Instead A General View of the...

Istanbul Households is a social history of marriage, the family and population in Istanbul during the turbulent period of transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Istanbul was the first Muslim city to experience a systematic decline in fertility and major changes in family life, and, as such, set the tone for many social and cultural changes in Turkey and the Muslim world. Istanbul was the major focal point for the forces of westernization of Turkish society, processes which not only transformed political and economic...

Making a Medical Market begins with the first voluntary hospital in 1720 and ends in 1911 with national health insurance. It looks at different forms of practice--public appointments in hospitals, office under state welfare systems, and private practice. From the 1750s medicine became more commercialized. Doctors were successful in raising demand for their own services but were unsuccessful in restricting competition. Many medical practitioners struggled to make a living by seeing many patients at low fees, so that "five minutes for the patient" is not a new feature of health care.

In Friends in Life and Death two distinguished historians join forces to exploit the exceptional riches offered by the records of British and Irish Quakers for the student of social, demographic, and familial change during the period 1650 1900. Professor Vann and Eversley have analysed the experiences of more than 8,000 Quaker families, involving over 30,000 individuals, to produce an unparalleled study of patterns of child-bearing, marriage, and death among a major religious grouping. The authors, wherever possible, compare the Quakers in the British Isles with the contemporary population of...

This book examines the dramatic fall in family size that occurred in Britain between 1860 and 1940. It overturns current thinking by showing how much variety there was in the occupational patterns of falling fertility. There are entirely new and surprising findings: births were widely spaced from early in marriage; and sexual abstinence by married couples was far more important than previously imagined. This study uniquely integrates the fields of demographic, feminist and labor with intellectual and political history, and will be of interest to all historians, and social and policy...

A Rural Society after the Black Death is a study of rural social structure in the English county of Essex between 1350 and 1500. It seeks to understand how, in the population collapse after the Black Death (1348 1349), a particular economic environment affected ordinary people's lives in the areas of migration, marriage and employment, and also contributed to patterns of religious nonconformity, agrarian riots and unrest, and even rural housing. The period under scrutiny is often seen as a transitional era between 'medieval' and 'early-modern' England, but in the light of recent advances in...

The Roman father has traditionally provided the pattern of patriarchy in European thought. This book shows how the social realities and cultural representations diverged from this paradigm. Demographic analysis and computer simulation demonstrate that before adulthood most Romans lost their fathers by death. Close reading of Latin texts reveals Roman fathers as devoted and loving, and not harsh, exploitative masters of slaves. The demographic and cultural contexts deepen our understanding of how the patrimony was transmitted.

Katherine Lynch discusses the role of the family in society from the late Middle Ages to the industrial period. She argues that in western Europe an ongoing, and recognizably western pattern of relationships among individuals, their families, and communities emerged in the late medieval period. Tracing the pattern through the nineteenth century, this study explores the family's function as an organization on the boundary between public and private life, rather than as part of a "private sphere," and how this phenomenon has been influenced by political, religious and demographic factors.

Scottish education and literacy have achieved a legendary status. A campaign promoted by church and state between 1560 and 1696 is said to have produced the most literate population in the early modern world. This book sets out to test this belief by comparing the ability to read and write in Scotland with northern England in particular and with Europe and North America in general. It combines extensive statistical analysis with qualitative and theoretical discussion to produce an important argument about the significance of literacy and education for the individual and society of relevance...