The relationship between mortality and socioeconomic status is among the most debated topics within historical demography. This article scrutinises social disparities in infant mortality and its underlying mechanisms in mid-nineteenth-century Amsterdam. We apply two methods of survival analysis (Cox proportional hazard models and Fine-Grey competing risk models) on newly digitised individual-level cause-of-death data for infants born in 1856 combined with civil certificates and population register data. Through a comparison of all-cause and cause-specific mortality, we bring to light important social differences in infants' mortality risks; hazard ratios for congenital and birth disorders during early post-neonatal infancy were over 50 per cent lower for Amsterdam's middle class than for unskilled workers. We argue that the social differentiation in infant mortality reflects stark intra-urban disparities in maternal health across social groups as well as a degree of medical ineffectiveness or even indifference structured along the same socioeconomic lines.
Keywords: Amsterdam; causes of death; infant mortality; nineteenth century; social inequality.
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.