Gender, Sex, and Health in Urban and Rural Late 19th-Century New York State

Industrialization and urbanization have important effects on health that may vary within or between populations. We examine variation in health during agricultural commercialization, industrialization, and urbanization in 19th-century rural Madison County and the city of Syracuse (Onondaga County) in New York State.

We use mortality data from New York State and Federal censuses, c. 1850-1880, to examine rural versus urban differences in health, and health outcomes by sex.

We find higher survivorship and lower hazards of death for older rural inhabitants (ages 45+), and lower rates of infectious disease deaths for older rural males compared to urban peers. We find similar survivorship and hazards of death for rural females and males, which may suggest exposure to similar risks and benefits, or the negative effects of rural environments for female health that counter their inherent physiological buffering. For urban inhabitants, we find worse outcomes for younger females compared to males (ages 15-44), which might reflect maternal mortality or occupational hazards. We find better outcomes for urban females past the age of 45, which might reflect selective mortality at younger ages or biological resilience.

These findings highlight the context-dependent nature of health and suggest the intersection of biological and cultural factors in shaping health. Urban health disadvantages appear in this context to be driven by conditions among older men, and sex/gender differences in health and mortality are not uniform between the urban and rural populations. Future work will assess the mechanisms driving the variation we observe.