The Attenuation of Mortality Crises and the Decline of Mortality

Abstract

Abstract If this chapter had been written a few years ago, the questions with which I am concerned in this paper would have appeared simple; it seemed selfevident that the secular fall in mortality had been caused primarily by a reduction in the importance of mortality crises, which were a fixed feature of the old demographic regime. It was also thought that these crises played an important part in the determination of population growth, ‘the regulator par excellence-perhaps better termed the destroyer of population growth’.’When looked at from this point of view, the old demographic regime seems to have been subject to periodic fluctuations in mortality, which appeared as a dynamic variable in the interaction between the economy, population, and society. Equilibrium between population and resources seemed to be determined as much by ecological constraints as by food supplies, technology, and social organization. The forces which acted as a brake on population growth were inherent in the system and closely dependent on one another.

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