Sex and Mortality: Changes in the Age Distribution of the Deceased According to Polish Press Obituaries, 1845–1939

Abstract

The paper traces the gradual transition from a society in which the age structure graph for female deaths has two distinct peaks punctuated by an area of low mortality at menopause (as if menopause reverses the trend, giving women a new life expectancy), to a model in which the age structure for men and women is similar, but women die later. The change observed was that the local minimum for female deaths (aged 41–45) remained the same, but one of the maxima (the group of women for whom life expectancy ended at the end of childbearing age) disappeared. Male deaths do not exhibit such a pattern, which can account for why men have benefited much less from the increase in life expectancy. The analysis is based on 470,000 Polish newspaper obituaries from 1845 to 1939 in which 205,000 people were listed, and from these 165,000 were selected for whom the age at death is known.

Keywords

• age of the deceased
• mortality
• menopause
• patriarchy
• sex differences
• feminism