The Center for Population Economics is currently creating a new extensive and detailed database of historic sources of ecological and public health information, such as disease and mortality reports, water and milk quality, infrastructure development, geographic features, weather data, and many other related topics. If you have specific questions, please contact the CPE Program Coordinator, as he may be able to direct you to useful sources while the database is under development.

The public health information at the CPE come from a variety of sources across cities and time. We have two distinct datasets:

Historic Urban Ecological Variable Dataset

The ecological variable dataset, currently in the alpha testing stage, is intended to be widely useful to historians, economists, demographers, epidemiologists, and other scholars. The dataset comprises information on regional, socioeconomic, health, and environmental conditions from about 1830-1930, compiled from hundreds of sources covering eight of the largest Northern urban centers of the time: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis, and eventually, additional cities. The strength of these data stems from their origins in little-used municipal data sources and new mapping capabilities that allow the reconstruction of neighborhood characteristics across the 19th and early 20th centuries. The CPE will use these data in conjunction with the life-cycle information on individual Union Army and US Colored Troops to examine the effects of differing environmental conditions on long-term health and aging outcomes. The data will be searchable on any number of fields and combinations of fields, such as city, date(s), resource type (e.g., map, aggregate public health report, infrastructure, climate), author or publishing entity, and repository location. To see examples of sources from the city of Boston, click here.


20th Century Public Health Dataset

These data come from reports by the United States Public Health Service (Source: Public Health Reports, Volumes 14-40, 1899-1925). The data include the following city-level information:

• The 1899-1911 Weekly Mortality Tables of major U.S. cities with causes of death (diseases: pulmonary tuberculosis, enteric fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, and whooping cough). Variables also include weekly cases and death of aforementioned diseases as well as total deaths in the cities.
  
  
• The 1899-1911 Bi-Annual Smallpox Tables of major U.S. cities and counties. Variables include cases and deaths of smallpox.
  
  
• The 1912-1925 Annual Notifiable Disease Tables of U.S. cities with populations over 10,000 (diseases: diphtheria, malaria, measles, meningitis, polio, rabies in man, scarlet fever, smallpox, tuberculosis--all forms: 1912-1925; pulmonary: 1916-1925, typhoid). Variables include cases and deaths from listed diseases as well as census population.