Access to Resources, Economic Stress, and Late-Life Mortality in North Orkney, Scotland, 1851-1911

Julia Jennings, University at Albany

Analyses of data drawn from the North Orkney Population History Project (NOPH) adds a new setting to the growing group of studies of demographic responses to economic stress. In this remote island environment, non-agricultural workers were especially vulnerable to the effects of staple grain price fluctuations (Jennings, Quaranta, & Bengtsson 2017). Additional research using the North Orkney data extended the original Eurasia Project conceptualization of social strata, primarily defined by occupational sector, wages, landholdings, or tax status, to consider position within local labor and marriage networks as a marker of social standing and access to resources that could help buffer the effects of short-term economic stress (Jennings 2019). This study extends this previous work in North Orkney to examine the effects of short-term economic stress on the demographic behavior of older adults between 1851 and 1911. Specifically, do short-term fluctuations in staple grain prices affect the mortality risk of adults over age 60? The analysis examines whether occupational sector, or prior occupational sector if individuals have retired, and position within local kin and labor networks affect the mortality response to food prices in late adulthood. Support from others within social and kin networks is consistent predictor of survival among older adults across contemporary settings. This study will address whether such effects extend into a historical context, when support for aging adults beyond individual savings and family resources were limited to the Church and poor relief. In addition, there is potential to observe whether there are any early protective effects of the Old Age Pensions Act 1908, which provided a small weekly pension to those over age 70 who met certain criteria including income limitations, as the NOPH database includes microdata from the 1911 census and death records covering the 20th century.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 206. Inequality, Economic Stress, and Demographic Behavior: Sub-Session 2. Fertility and Mortality Responses to Economic Stress in the Modernizing World