Neuroticism mediates the relationship between industrial history and modern-day regional obesity levels.

OBJECTIVE: The historical factors and contemporary mechanisms underlying geographical inequalities in obesity levels remain uncertain. In this study, we examine whether modern regional variation in obesity is partly a result of the impact of large-scale industry on the personality traits of those living in regions once at the center of the Industrial Revolution. METHOD: Exposure to the effects of the Industrial Revolution was assessed using unique historical data from English/Welsh counties (N = 111). Specifically, we examined the relationship between the regional employment share in large-scale coal-based industries in 1813-1820 and contemporary regional obesity levels (2013-2015). The Big Five personality traits and regional unemployment levels were examined as potential mediators of this association. RESULTS: The historical regional employment share in large-scale industries positively predicted the modern-day regional prevalence of obesity. Mediation analysis showed that areas exposed to the decline of large-scale industries experienced elevated Neuroticism and unemployment levels that explained almost half of the association between the historical dominance of large-scale industry and modern-day obesity levels. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide initial evidence that raised regional Neuroticism levels may play a key role in explaining why exposure to the rapid growth and subsequent decline of large-scale industries forecasts modern-day obesity levels.

Height and health in late eighteenth-century England.

Adult stature has become a widely used indicator of childhood nutritional status in historical populations and may provide insights into health inequalities that are not discernible in mortality rates. However, most pre-twentieth-century British data on heights suffer from selection biases. Here we present unique evidence on heights of adult males by occupation from an unbiased sample of adult males in Dorset in 1798-99. The mean height of fully grown (married) men was very similar to that of older military recruits, and our sample therefore confirms the taller stature of English males relative to males of other European countries in the same period. In contrast to previous evidence of negligible or U-shaped socio-economic gradients in mortality in this period, we found a fairly linear gradient in height by socio-economic status, that is similar in magnitude to class differences in adult height among English males born in the mid-twentieth century.Supplementary material for this article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2020.1823011.

Cholera as a 'sanitary test' of British cities, 1831-1866.

The malign contribution of northern industrial cities to the stagnation of national life expectancy over the period 1820-1870 forms part of one of the most long-running debates in English economic history, regarding the impact of early industrialisation on living standards. The deteriorating quality of urban water supplies often features in these arguments as the key driver of worsening mortality in this period. Here we use mortality reported from cholera in the epidemic years 1831-1832 and 1848-1849 as an indicator of the extent of sewage contamination of water in English and Welsh towns in this period. Surprisingly, the geography of reported mortality did not indicate that northern manufacturing and industrial towns were especially deficient in this respect. However, logistic regression analyses identified a number of risk factors for high cholera mortality, including location on coal-bearing strata, which was a feature of many industrial towns. Notably, however, textile-manufacturing towns, although often located in coal-rich districts, were associated with low levels of cholera mortality, and high population growth rates did not influence the risk of cholera. Reductions in cholera mortality after 1849 raise the possibility of widespread improvements in water quality after mid-century, rather earlier than is often assumed. However, in contrast to cholera, infant and diarrhoeal mortality remained high especially in northern towns until at least 1900. Several lines of evidence suggest that infants were relatively protected from waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid, and therefore did not benefit greatly from improvements in water quality. We conclude (1) that any worsening of water quality in urban areas c.1800-1850 was not confined to new͛ or rapidly growing industrial or manufacturing towns; and (2) infants probably rarely drank untreated water, so high infant or diarrhoeal mortality rates should not be read as indicators of poor water quality, in the English context.

An introduction to the history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the long-run decline in mortality.

This article, written during the COVID-19 epidemic, provides a general introduction to the long-term history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the spectacular long-term improvements in life expectancy since 1750, primarily with reference to English history. The story is a fundamentally optimistic one. In 2019 global life expectancy was approaching 73 years. In 1800 it was probably about 30. To understand the origins of this transition, we have to look at the historical sequence by which so many causes of premature death have been vanquished over time. In England that story begins much earlier than often supposed, in the years around 1600. The first two 'victories' were over famine and plague. However, economic changes with negative influences on mortality meant that, despite this, life expectancies were either falling or stable between the late sixteenth and mid eighteenth centuries. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw major declines in deaths from smallpox, malaria and typhus and the beginnings of the long-run increases in life expectancy. The period also saw urban areas become capable of demographic growth without a constant stream of migrants from the countryside: a necessary precondition for the global urbanization of the last two centuries and for modern economic growth. Since 1840 the highest national life expectancy globally has increased by three years in every decade.

The geography of smallpox in England before vaccination: A conundrum resolved.

Smallpox is regarded as an ancient and lethal disease of humans, however very little is known about the prevalence and impact of smallpox before the advent of vaccination (c.1800). Here we use evidence from English burial records covering the period 1650-1799 to confirm a striking geography to smallpox patterns. Smallpox apparently circulated as a childhood disease in northern England and Sweden, even where population densities were low and settlement patterns dispersed. However, smallpox was a relatively rare epidemic disease in southern England outside the largest cities, despite its commercialised economy and the growing spatial interconnectedness of its settlements. We investigated a number of factors hypothesised to influence the regional circulation of smallpox, including exposure to naturally occurring orthopox viruses, settlement patterns, and deliberate preventative measures. We concluded that transmission was controlled in southern England by local practices of avoidance and mass inoculation that arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Avoidance measures included isolation of victims in pest houses and private homes, as well as cancellation of markets and other public gatherings, and pre-dated the widespread use of inoculation. The historical pattern of smallpox in England supports phylogenetic evidence for a relatively recent origin of the variola strains that circulated in the twentieth century, and provides evidence for the efficacy of preventative strategies complementary to immunisation.

In the shadow of coal: How large-scale industries contributed to present-day regional differences in personality and well-being.

Recent research has identified regional variation of personality traits within countries but we know little about the underlying drivers of this variation. We propose that the Industrial Revolution, as a key era in the history of industrialized nations, has led to a persistent clustering of well-being outcomes and personality traits associated with psychological adversity via processes of selective migration and socialization. Analyzing data from England and Wales, we examine relationships between the historical employment share in large-scale coal-based industries (coal mining and steam-powered manufacturing industries that used this coal as fuel for their steam engines) and today's regional variation in personality and well-being. Even after controlling for possible historical confounds (historical energy supply, education, wealth, geology, climate, population density), we find that the historical local dominance of large-scale coal-based industries predicts today's markers of psychological adversity (lower Conscientiousness [and order facet scores], higher Neuroticism [and anxiety and depression facet scores], lower activity [an Extraversion facet], and lower life satisfaction and life expectancy). An instrumental variable analysis, using the historical location of coalfields, supports the causal assumption behind these effects (with the exception of life satisfaction). Further analyses focusing on mechanisms hint at the roles of selective migration and persisting economic hardship. Finally, a robustness check in the U.S. replicates the effect of the historical concentration of large-scale industries on today's levels of psychological adversity. Taken together, the results show how today's regional patterns of personality and well-being (which shape the future trajectories of these regions) may have their roots in major societal changes underway decades or centuries earlier. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The rise of agrarian capitalism and the decline of family farming in England.

Historians have documented rising farm sizes throughout the period 1450­1850. Existing studies have revealed much about the mechanisms underlying the development of agrarian capitalism. However, we currently lack any consensus as to when the critical developments occurred. This is largely due to the absence of sufficiently large and geographically wide-ranging datasets but is also attributable to conceptual weaknesses in much of the literature. This article develops a new approach to the problem and argues that agrarian capitalism was dominant in southern and eastern England by 1700 but that in northern England the critical developments came later.