Romola Davenport & Jim Oeppen
Campop’s studies of mortality suggest that, in England, average life expectancy at birth varied between 35 and 40 years in the centuries between 1600 and 1800. It is a common misconception that, when life expectancy was so low, there must have been very few old people. In fact, the most common age for adult deaths was around 70 years, in line with the Biblical three score years and ten. So what does ‘life expectancy’ actually measure?
Tags: demography, economic history, life expectancy, mortality, old age, social history
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Amy Erickson
It is commonly assumed that women entered the workforce in significant numbers only after the World Wars of the 20th century. While women may have been occupied with household duties in previous centuries, the assumption goes, they were much less likely than men to engage in paid labour. This blog explains why a) that’s wrong, and b) the issue is much more complicated than simply a progressive increase in women earning their own salary.
Tags: domestic labour, economic history, gender pay gap, industrial revolution, social history, women's employment, women's history, women's wages, women's work
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