Women, Family and Death: Excess Mortality of Women in Child bearing Age in Four Communities in Nineteenth-century Germany

As everyone knows, the sex-specific differences in mortality and susceptibility to illness of the population constitute pressing and consequential problems. Women become ill more often than men and are thus a much greater burden on the medical welfare system of a country; but they (therefore?) live longer. According to the computations of the Federal Office of Statistics in Wiesbaden, girls born in West Germany in 1975-7 could expect to live 75.2 years; boys, on the other hand, only 68.6 years.1 The life-span of women is onetenth longer than that of men. Or in other words: for a woman every tenth year — at least in comparison to a man’s life-span — is extra, is a gift — whether a welcome one or not is of course another question.