Metadata record for Lifespans of the European Elite, 800-1800
100492
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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V1
Lifespans of the European Elite, 800-1800
100492
http://doi.org/10.3886/E100492V1
Neil Cummins
Please see full citation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.
Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
Cummins, Neil. Lifespans of the European Elite, 800-1800. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2017-03-09. https://doi.org/10.3886/E100492V1
I analyze the adult age at death of 115,650 European
nobles from 800 to 1800. Longevity began increasing long before 1800 and the
Industrial Revolution, with marked increases around 1400 and again around 1650.
Declines in violent deaths from battle contributed to some of this increase,
but the majority must reflect other changes in individual behavior. There are
historic spatial contours to European elite mortality; North-West Europe
achieved greater adult lifespans than the rest of Europe even by 1000AD.The data underlying this analysis is deposited here and the code files replicate the tables and figures in the paper. The data and replication files are in the R language.