The Influence of Environmental and Household Factors on Mortality in North Orkney, 1851-1961

Julia Jennings, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Daniel Parker, Pennsylvania State University
James W. Wood, Pennsylvania State University

The contexts of both the local environment and the household have important effects on the economic and physical well-being of agriculturalists in nonindustrial and industrializing regions. In order to meet their needs, family farms must produce enough to fulfill their consumption requirements. Factors such as meteorological events, the size and quality of landholdings, and household composition influence the chances of farming success, and in turn, the ability of households to meet the needs of their members. In times of hardship, certain dietary or economic needs may go unmet, thereby increasing the chances of mortality. Using vital register data from North Orkney, individual lives are reconstructed from birth until death and linked to several sources of local environmental and household-level data. Event history models are used to examine individual-level mortality responses to environmental and household variables that are important to agricultural production.