ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a special issue of The History of the Family on sanitation and urban mortality. The special issue contains papers which focus on the impact of sanitary reforms on mortality change in Australia, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, and England and Wales. The current paper outlines the main features of the debate over the causes of mortality change and the role played by sanitary reforms in this. It then highlights some of the methodological and other challenges posed by the definition of ‘urban’ areas, the identification of relevant sanitary reforms, and the choice of dependent variables. The paper then proceeds to summarise the main features of the individual papers before drawing some conclusions for future research.

摘要

本文介绍了《家庭历史》有关卫生和城市死亡率的特刊。本期特刊包含一些论文，重点讨论了卫生改革对澳大利亚，瑞士，芬兰，瑞典以及英格兰和威尔士的死亡率变化的影响。本文概述了关于死亡率变化的原因以及卫生改革在其中所起的作用的辩论的主要特征。然后重点介绍了“城市”区域的定义，相关卫生改革的确定以及因变量的选择所带来的一些方法学挑战和其他挑战。然后，本文在总结一些结论以供将来研究之前，继续总结了各个论文的主要特征。