The causes of mortality decline in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries

In their recent account of the relationship between social capital and the political economy of public health,1 Simon Szreter and Michael Woolcock distinguish between two different forms of social capital—‘bonding’ social capital and ‘bridging’ social capital—and identify a specialized form of bridging social capital called ‘linking social capital’, which is distinguished from other manifestations of bridging social capital by its emphasis on the construction of relationships between acknowledged social unequals. Their theoretical argument is buttressed by a historical case-study of the relationship between social action and the decline of mortality in nineteenthand early-twentiethcentury Britain. Although Szreter and Woolcock have sought to emphasize the fact that social capital is ‘emphatically not ... the sole (or always primary) variable that explains (or should be used to try to explain) public health outcomes’,2 it is at least arguable that their enthusiasm for the concept has nevertheless led them to present a somewhat one-sided account of the history of public health reform and mortality change in nineteenthcentury Britain. I would like to develop this argument further by considering three main points: (i) the causes of mortality decline in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries; (ii) the origins and nature of changes in nineteenth-century social policy; and (iii) the timing of mortality changes.

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