Urbanization, mortality, and the standard of living debate: new estimates of the expectation of life at birth in nineteenth-century British cities

This article provides empirically based estimates for life expectancy at birth in the largest British cities in the nineteenth century. This evidence reflects the experience of women and children as well as men. It indicates that mortality levels in Britain's industrializing cities deteriorated substantially during the second quarter of the nineteenth century and did not improve significantly thereafter until the 1870s and 1880s. These findings confirm the implications of other recent research within the standard of living debate, notably anthropometric work. Such evidence indicates that, despite rising adult male real wages, the standard of living of the industrial urban population was seriously compromised during the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century.