Long-term Mortality Patterns in Chinese History: Evidence from a Recorded Clan Population

Abstract

Human populations have lived on the earth for millions of years, yet the study of population history only began to be established in the mid-twentieth century. In spite of the considerable progress in the study of historical demography which has since been made, there have been hardly any detailed studies of fertility and mortality before the sixteenth century. This study, by analysing a set of Chinese genealogies, examines long-term mortality patterns in a selected clan population over a period of more than 1000 years. The result shows that, in this selected population, mortality fluctuated around a relatively high level and showed no secular change over the very long period studied. The study also provides a comparison between the mortality patterns found in the selected population and those observed in a much larger Chinese lineage population, as well as those recorded among the British elites born between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth century. Based on the findings of this research, the paper presents some tentative suggestions about long-term mortality changes in Chinese history.

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