Watch Out for the Children! Differential Infant Mortality of Jews and Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Venice

Renzo Derosas

In the past, infant mortality rates in Jewish communities throughout the world were dramatically lower than those of their host populations. Nineteenth-century Venice was no exception: whereas the Catholic rates were about 25-30 percent, the Jewish rate was as low as 14 percent or even less. Several factors have been put forward to explain such differentials, including genetic makeup, religious prescriptions, personal hygiene, austere habits, community welfare institutions and social cohesion, higher cultural level, fertility control, prolonged breastfeeding, and the like. A comparison between a sample of the Jewish population and two parishes with similar social composition shows that, in the Venetian case at least, most of these factors cannot account for such a striking difference. Furthermore, both descriptive and hazards analyses clearly indicate that, although levels were dramatically different, infant mortality patterns were remarkably similar among Venetian Jews and Catholics, who had almost everything in common but their culture, particularly cultural attitudes toward life, death, health, and well-being. This article advances the hypothesis that such attitudes were reflected in childcare or child neglect, justifying Catholic overmortality rather than Jewish undermortality. It also argues that the subsequent declining mortality rate might have been based on the spread of similar attitudes to the rest of the population, which could represent a key for interpreting mortality decline on a wider scale.

HISTORICAL METHODS, Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 >::::t: c.. < a:: C!S O :2: Watch Out for the Children! W C "C c: ~ >t- t= Differential Infant Mortality of Jews and Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Venice :z W RENZO DEROSAS Department oJ History Ca' Foscari University, Venice C in fall1861, but soon the group was so disgusted by the filth and stench everywhere that they decided to return as quickly as possible to the gondola that had taken them there, as to the safe harbor of civilization: Abstract In the past, infant mortality rates in Jewish communities throughout the world were dramatically lower than those of their host populations. Nineteenth-century Venice was no exception: whereas the Catholic rates were about 25-30 percent, the Jewish rate was as low as 14 percent or even lesso Several factors have been put forward to explain such differentials, including genetic makeup, religious prescriptions, personal hygiene, austere habits, corntnunity welfare institutions and social cohesion, higher cultural level, fertility control, prolonged breastfeeding, and the like. A comparison between a sample of the Jewish population and two parishes with similar social composition shows that, in the Venetian case at least, most of the factors cannot account for such a striking difference. Furthermore, both descriptive and hazard analyses clearly indicate that, although levels were dramatically different, infant mortality patterns were remarkably similar)illlong Venetian Jews and Catholics, who had almost everything in common but their culture, particularly cultural attitudes toward life, death, health, and well-being. This article advances the hypothesis that such attitudes were reflected in childcare or child neglect, justifying Catholic overmortality rather than Jewish undermortality. It also argues that the subsequent declining mortality rate might have been based on the spread of similar attitudes to the rest of the population, which could represent a key for interpreting mortality decline on a wider scale. Keywords: Catholics, event-history Jews, nineteenth-century Venice analysis, There was not a touch of anything wholesome, or pleasant, or attractive, to re lieve the noisomeness of the Ghetto to its visitors; and they applauded, with a common voice, the neatness which had prompted Andrea the gondolier to roll up the carpet from the floor of his gondola, and not to spread it again within the limits of that quarter. (Howells [1866] 2001, 159) Howells wondered how people could stilI endure living in such a place.2 Indeed, soon after 1797, when aH antiJewish discrimination had been abolished by the new revolutionary regime,3 the richest members of the Jewish community left the Ghetto and moved to magnificent palaces located in the city center or along the Grand Canal, rapidly unifying the city elite (Calabi 2001), but many others clung to the spot where their temples still remain, and which was hallowed by long suffering, and soaked with the blood of innumerable generations of geese. ... I do not understand why any class of Jews should still remain in the Ghetto, but it is certain ... that they do remain there in great numbers. It may be that the impurity of the pIace and the atmosphere is conducive to purity of race; but I question if the Jews buried on the sandy slope of the Lido, and blown over by the sweet sea wind-it must needs blow many centuries to cleanse them of the Ghetto-are not rather to be envied by the inhabitants of those high dirty houses and low dirty lanes .... (Howells [1866] 2001,154-55,159) infant mortality, Prologue: A Visit to the Venetian Ghetto in 1861 Among the innumerable reports written by foreign visitors to Venice, William Dean Howells's Venetian Life ([1866] 2001) is certainly one of the most outstanding, truly deserving of its long-lasting success.l Amusing and sympathetic at the same time, the lively account of the four years the American writer spent in the city as U.S. con sul is enjoyable to this day. A few pages of the book are also devoted to the Jewish Ghetto, then as now one of the favorite attractions for tourists and foreigners (Ravid 1997). Howells went there with some friends, on a bright morning Notwithstanding his ironic tone, Howells's feelings toward the Venetian Jews were sympathetic. He was well aware of the "long suffering" they had had to endure in past times and pleased by the social and economic success they had recently enjoyed, "flourishing upon the waste and 109 110 wickedness of their oppressors," the Venetian aristocracy, then a prey to a disastrous financial crisis (Derosas 1989/90). He even fancied a kind of retrospective revenge for the past: In the good old times when pestilence avenged the poor and oppressed upon their oppressors, what grim and dismal plagues may not have stalked by night and noonday out of those hideous streets, and passed the marble bounds of patrician palaces, and brought to the bedsides of the rich and proud the filthy misery of the Ghetto turned to poison! (Howells [1866] 2001,159) Background: Jewish and Catholic Mortality in Venice Indeed, even if true, imagining that the aristocracy should suffer widespread affliction would have been a meager consolation. Whether aware or not, Howells dealt with a very delicate topic. The charge of voluntarily spreading epidemics among Christian populations had represented one of the pillars of anti-Semitism since the fourteenth century (Ginzburg 1991; Poliakov 1955). Anyway, it is also true that such a "scientific" version of the ancient accusation was obviously as groundless as the infamous one. As a matter of fact, there is no evidence that in the great plagues of the past, as well as in the more recent cholera epidemics, infections had first developed in the Ghetto. The mortaIity crises caused by such epidemics were more prevalent among Catholics than among Jews, raising the suspicion that the latter might have enjoyed some kind of mysterious immunity (Roth [1933] 1991, 109-11). In the disastrous plague of 1630-31, around onethird of the inhabitants of the city died, whereas the proportion for the Venetian Jews was about l out of 7, although one would expect that the population density of the Ghetto surely should have increased exposure to contagion (Beltrami 1954; Harris 1967; Della Pergola 1987). As for the cholera epidemic of 1849, when 3,839 persons (3 percent of the total population) died in less than three months, the toll paid by the Jews was only 39 deaths, around 1.7 percent of the community. Similar conclusions can be reached about the cholera epidemics of 1855, 1866, and 1867 (Duodo 1874; Namias 1856). More important, such differences were not limited to periods of acute demographic crises but rather concerned the mortality regime in ordinary times as well. In the second half of the nineteenth century, life expectancy at birth was 48 years for the inhabitants of the Ghetto, whereas in the whole city it did not pass 30 years. The difference is even more striking if one considers that life expectancy for the Jews was concerned with only the poorest members of the community, as we shall see later, and is computed in a period (1850-69) that was marked by several epidemic outbreaks and by two severe economic crises (1854/55 and 1867). Data on Venice include a wider social range and refer to a much more positive period (1874-80) from both the economic and demographic points of view.4 HISTORICAL METHODS At the age of 20, life expectancy in the two groups was much closer: 45 years for the Jews and 37 for the city. But whereas three-quarters of Jewish newborns could expect to reach that age, only a half of city residents did the same.5 As one would expect, such a gap was almost exclusively due to differences in infant and childhood mortaIity rates. In the years 1850-69, 197 Jewish babies died during their infancy-14 percent out of 1,409 live births. The corresponding figure for Venice in 1874-80 was 22.5 percent. Howells would surely have been amazed to find that the children he had seen intent on plucking geese and thus surrounded by clouds of feathers, had survived a challenging selection process in the early stage of their life, but one that was not even comparable to that experienced by their Catholic counterparts, who lived in much cleaner and healthier areas. The life prospects of Jews, at least from a demographic point of view, were indeed much rosier. I will try to explain the differences in infant mortality between Jews and Catholics in mid-nineteenth-century Venice. Because such differentials were common to most other locations where Jews and non-Jews lived in close promixity, the results of this analysis can probably be generalized. I also argue that the peculiarity of the Jewish case has wider implications for an interpretation of mortality decline in demographic transition, highlighting the primacy of behavioral, culturally determined factors in such a processo This article is organized as follows: (1) it presents a review of the literature available on Jewish infant and childhood mortality, (2) it tests some current explanations of the Jewish advantage with reference to empirical data regarding the Venetian Jews, (3) it carries out a comparison of the mortality patterns in the Jewish sample and in two other Venetian samples with a similar soci al composition, using both descriptive and multivariate event-history analysis, and (4) it considers the results obtained in the framework of the different cultural backgrounds characterizing Jewish and Catholic attitudes toward health and childcare. Evidence of the Jewish Advantage in Infant and Childhood Mortality The gap between Jewish and Catholic mortality rates was not peculiar to the Venetian situation. Wherever such a comparison has been carried out, the Jewish communities have shown similar or even more pronounced differentials from their host populations, with a remarkable regularity across time and space that is quite unprecedented in historical demography. Uziel Schmelz's (1971) impressive study provides the most extensive collection of evidence on this issue. He gathered some 160 observations, spanning from 1819 to 1967, that covered different nations or wide regional areas, such as Russia, Poland, Prussia, Bavaria, Westphalia, Serbia, Bohemia, Moravia, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada, as well as the cities of Vilna, Lvov, Krakow, Warsaw, Lodz, Budapest, Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 Berlin, Hessen, Munich, Vienna, Florence, Trieste, Rome, Turin, Milan, Amsterdam, London, New York, St. Louis, Providence, Detroit, and Montreal. With no more than two or three exceptions, Jewish rates were systematically lower by 30 to 80 percent than those of the corresponding host populations. Since then, further confirmation has come from new research, mainly related to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, concerning several samples of the U.S. urban population (Preston and Haines 1991; Preston, Ewbank, and Hereward 1994; Condran and Kramarow 1991); poor immigrants in East London slums (Marks 1994); the working class in Manchester (Johansson 1987, quoting Ashby 1915); Warsaw (Corrsin 1989); the Netherlands (van Poppe11992; van Poppel, Schellekens, and Liefbroer 2002); Germany (Str6der and Schuster 1982); Gibraltar (Sawchuk, Herring, and Waks 1985; Sawchuk 1993). Even in eighteenth-century Dutch Guiana (now Suriname) the Jews enjoyed a remarkable advantage in infant mortality (Cohen 1989). The above is also true for Italy. For the Jewish community of the Tuscan country town of Pitigliano, Massimo Livi Bacci (1978) found infant mortality rates declining from 21 to 17 percent in the nineteenth century, whereas those concerning the Catholic population remained around 24 percent. Even lower rates, ranging from 12 to 17 percent, were found for Florence in the first half of the nineteenth century (Sardi Bucci 1976) and for Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan in the second half (Della Pergola 1983; 1997; Bachi and Della Pergola 1984), with an astonishing minimum as low as 8 percent in Trieste in 1821-25 (Gatti 1991). But similar conclusions had already been reached about Verona in the pioneering works of Cesare Lombroso (1894), about Padua by Corrado Gini (1916), and by Livio Livi (1918-20) in a much wider framework of international comparisons. Interestingly enough, Lombroso's inquiry was clearly motivated by the fear that the existence of such demographic differentials might encourage new forms of anti-Semitism. Therefore, he tried to demonstrate, although not very convincingly, that the lower mortality rates of the Jews of Verona were the result of a statistical artifact, hiding an alleged systematic recourse to abandonment. However, the awareness of a Jewish advantage in mortality rates is much older, going at least as far back as the eighteenth century. In 1787, the meteorologist Giuseppe Toaldo (1787), a professor at the University of Padua, published a series of life tables comparing urban, country, and mountain populations as well as friars, nuns, and Jews of the Venetian state to highlight the climatic, hygienic, and social factors that most influenced demographic behavior. Specifically, Toaldo included the Jews to test the hypothesis that had been advanced a few years before by Gianverardo Zeviani (1775), chief physician in Verona, that neonatal overrnortality in wintertime was due to the custom of exposing newborns to cold and harsh weather when they were being baptized. 111 Indeed, Toaldo found that whereas "only" one-fifth of the Jewish newborns died in the first year of life, "notwithstanding the painful operation of circumcision," the proportion for the mountain parishes was more than two-fifths. He found as well that at older ages, life expectancy for Jews was higher than that of friars and nuns, which he explained by referring to the austerity of the Jewish lifestyle. Toaldo recommended that his readers seriously consider this aspect when lending or borrowing money "on the life of a Jew." The Jewish Advantage In Livi Bacci's (1978) study on Pitigliano, the author stressed that comparing Jewish and Catholic demographic behavior would highlight the effect of the "very peculiar" conditions that characterized the life of the Jews in many respects. Although such a consideration is indisputable in itself, it also contains an opposite or rather complementary viewpoint. Because at the same time, and to an increasing degree-as long as contacts and integration with other ethnic groups grew in frequency and intensity-Jews and nonJews also shared many fundamental aspects of their daily life. Climatic conditions, economic conjuncture, family structure, as well as socioprofessional composition, were the same. Under certain circumstances, as we have seen for the hygienic conditions of the Venetian Ghetto, the situation of the Jews could have been even worse than that of their non-Jewish counterparts. Thus, alI such factors, usually considered to affect infant mortality, cannot explain the different behavior of the two groups. Indeed, such factors could have played a relevant role in determining mortality differentials within the Jewish and non-Jewish populations but cannot explain the huge gap observed between the two mortality levels overall. The relevance of such a point of view is more evident if we consider it in the framework of the debate on the causes of mortality decline. If a given combination of economic, social, and hygienic conditions were compatible with mortality rates so dramaticalIy different, one could reasonably doubt that the decline process was mainly related to a generai improvement in any of such factors, whether in nutrition (McKeown 1976), in public health (Szreter 1988), or in pathogenic virulence (Chambers 1972). Alternatively, or at least in association with such interpretations, one could suggest extending the study to include increasingly large strata of non-Jewish populations concerning those conditions that allowed Jews to keep their mortality levels at much lower rates. In a famous essay, Livi Bacci (1986) included the Jews among the social groups that were "forerunners" of demographic behavior the rest of the population would adopt only several decades later. Although he referred to fertility control, the same label could rightly be used for infant mortality, as Sergio Della Pergola (1983) has shown by reelaborating Schmelz's (1971) data. In the large European and American sample he analyzed, when Jewish infant 112 mortality rates were about 16 percent (c. 1860), the corresponding rates for non-Jews were about 24 percent. The latter would have reached the level of the former only around 1910; at that time, however, the Jewish rates were already below IO percent. As time passed and rates converged toward lower levels, the Jewish advance reduced progressively, though never completely disappearing. Genetic features. What were the reasons for the Jewish advantage? A large array of factors has been put forward to explain such a phenomenon, including racial and genetic differences. As Lombroso had somehow foreseen, the peculiarities of Jewish demography were used in Nazi Germany as an argument in favor of the aberrant pretension of a Jewish racial specificity, as opposed to the Aryan race, whose tragic outcome was to be the extermination of an entire peopIe (Della Pergola 1983,149-54, where the genetic features of different Jewish populations are also discussed). The genetic argument, although from a transitional point of view, was also used to explain a supposed resistance to infectious diseases, especially to tuberculosis, hypothesizing that both isolation in Ghettos and endogamy had favored a mechanism of hereditary immunization through the selection of the most resistant individuals (Fishberg 1902, 1911; Sanarelli 19l3; Livi 1918-20; Bachi 1932; Rumyaneck 1933). However, recent research has cast serious doubt on the reliability of data demonstrating such an alleged immunity as well as on the scientific foundation of such a theory (Sawchuk and Herring 1984). Religious prescriptions. Nonetheless, many scholars prefer to underline the importance of several aspects connected to the peculiarity of the Jewish lifestyle (Della Pergola 1983, 138-48; Condran and Kramarow 1991,229-35; Dorff 1986). Most aspects are directly related to religious prescriptions: just consider, for instance, the rules about personal hygiene, such as frequent hand washing especially before and after meals, nail cutting, and ritual baths for purification that women were expected to take at least once a month. Indeed, the importance of such minimal rules of hygiene should not be underestimated. Recent research has shown that in developing countries maternai hand washing reduces episodes of childhood diarrhea by up to 90 percent, whereas the availability of running water in itself has no significant effect (Alam and Wai 1991).6 Furthermore, the body of Jewish dietary law known as Kashrut guaranteed against the ingestion of contaminated or unhealthy food. Certain cuts of beef that did not receive rabbinical sanction, as well as alI pork and shellfish, were strictly forbidden. The separation of milk and meat offered children further protection from contaminated food. Because eating insects and worms was prohibited, Jews were obliged to carefully inspect their food and table. As Frans van Poppel (1992, 244) put it, "continuous vigilance was required. A meal could never be prepared absent-mindedly." mSTORICAL METHODS Lifestyle. Other aspects typical of the Jewish lifestyle were only indirectly related to religious rules; rather, they reflected a widespread cultural attitude. For instance, although careful housec1eaning was required only before Passover, it seems that Jewish women usually kept their houses rather clean, in sharp contrast with the filthy conditions that prevailed in streets and common areas, which frequently raised the apprehension of local authorities (Condran and Kramarow 1991,230-32). In addition, as Toaldo (1787) himself had suggested, the Jewish lifestyle was supposed to be more sober than that of other ethnic groups and host populations. Alcoholism was almost unknown among Jews, even among immigrants to the United States (Condran and Karamarow 1991, 230). Illegitimacy rates, usually connected with higher infant mortality, were systematically lower among Jews (Schmelz 1971, 37), whose strong attachment to domestic values and duties was largely acknowledged (Marks 1994, 67-70). Even sexual practices, forbidding intercourse during "impure days," not only improved personal hygiene but also made fertility contro l easier, with positive consequences on the well-being of mothers and children (Rumyaneck 1933; Della Pergola 1983, 208-15; Livi Bacci 1986; van Poppel 1992,244; Watkins and Danzi 1995). Childcare. The subject of childcare is especially significant to our study. Even beyond the traditional stereotype of the Jewish mother, which has little to do with the Sephardic culture prevailing in the Italian Diaspora, contemporaries frequently stressed the particular concern of Jewish mothers for their children's health and well-being. Prolonged breastfeeding is certainly the most relevant of such attitudes, largely confirmed from a statistical viewpoint by Robert Woodbury's (1926, 75-120) inquiry on eight American cities between 1911 and 1915 (Alter 1997, 99-101), and repeated by other authors for European communities as well (Sanders 1918, 69-70; Marks 1994, 67-70). Breastfeeding itself was just an aspect of a wider solicitude of Jewish mothers for their children. According to Alice Goldstein, Susan C. Watkins, and Ann R. Spector (1994), who interviewed several elderly Jewish and Italian women whose families had immigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century, the behavior of mothers regarding their children's healthcare and prevention of sickness were radically different, although their soci al and economic conditions were very similar. Whereas Italians were quite reluctant to seek the advice of doctors except in cases of extreme gravity, preferring to adopt the remedies of traditional medicine, Jewish mothers anxiously called for a doctor at the slightest symptom and carefully followed the advice received (see also O'Connell 1986). Welfare institutions. Several factors were at work here: a higher educational attainment, a culture traditionally more open to medicai science-especially the availability of Jewish physicians who probably offered their services at lower Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 prices than Italian doctors if not for free. On the other hand, all Jewish communities developed a variety of welfare institutions and services, providing assistance and help with money, clothing, food, education, work, and medicaI care. As Rainer Liedtke (1998, 165-84) underlined, such community welfare systems were also maintained after Jewish emancipation and were a fundamental factor in keeping Jewish identity alive and in preserving social relations within communities, by making the existing sharp social inequalities more acceptable. The role of women was particularly important, both as organizers and objects of assistance, especially during and after childbirth, when their need for help was greater and physical and psychological stress more pronounced. In London's East End, for instance, the Jewish Board of Guardians provided medicai care and financial support to pregnant women and young mothers. In 1891, a Home Help Scheme was developed, specifically focused on assistance in housekeeping, cooking, shopping, and childcare. It is most interesting that help was provided by other poor women, usually widows, who understood only too well the actual hardships that had to be faced, whereas the Catholic charitable organizations active in the same neighborhood were based on the voluntary activity of middle-class women, inspired by an interclass soci al ideology that inevitably reduced the effectiveness of their intervention (Marks 1994, 108-16). The Venetian Case: Poor Jews and Poor Catholics Indeed, all these aspects could have been significant in lowering Jewish children's mortality, both reducing their exposure and improving their resistance to disease. However, the generai picture outlined above sounds too idyllic to appear fully persuasive, as well as too difficult to be relevant to so many different situations in time and space. To evaluate more precisely the impact on infant and early childhood mortality of some of the above-mentioned factors, I will focus here on the concrete historical experience of the Jewish community in mid-nineteenth-century Venice. In particular, I will refer to those Jews who stilllived in the Ghetto at that time, although I shall also extend some analyses to the whole community. For this purpose, I will carry out a comparison with two other samples of the Venetian population: the residents of the parishes of Angelo Raffaele and Santa Eufemia. The data for this analysis will be drawn from the Venetian population register, which was established in 1850 and updated until 1869 (Derosas 1989). Population registers provide longitudinal information on individuals as well as on the family, the household and, to some extent, the wider community (van de Walle and Blanc 1975; Alter 1988; Alter and Gutmann 1999). Furthermore, parish or community registers of births (baptisms), marriages, and deaths (burials) are used to integrate or control the data from the population register. Death registers also provide informa- 113 tion on the cause of death. The city sanitary officer also kept registers of each death taking pIace in the city, together with the length of sickness. As previously mentioned, the Jews of the Ghetto were by far the poorest members of the community. According to the census of 1869 (Rilievo degli abitanti di Venezia 1869 1871), of 2,415 Jews living in Venice, one-third lived in the centraI parishes of San Marco. Around 1,700 lived in the sestiere of Cannaregio, which inc1uded the Ghetto. Indeed, those who could afford to do so preferred to move out, though they did not go too far from their ancient seat (Calabi 2001; Levis Sullam 2001). The sample for this analysis comprises a group of about 700 persons. In the same year, the parish of Santa Eufemia, covering the whole island of the Giudecca, had 2,795 inhabitants, while the parish of Angelo Raffaele reached 4,427 inhabitants. If one considers the urban environment, the three areas were quite dissimilar. The residents of both Angelo Raffaele and Santa Eufemia lived mainly in small one-story houses; however, the population density was much higher in the former (around 170 inhabitants per hectare) than in the latter (around 30), because a large part of the island was covered by orchards. On the other hand, the Ghetto was characterized by big buildings-some as tall as eight stories-that the Jews had been obliged to build so as to house a growing population forced to live within a restricted area. Here, the population density was the highest in the city, reaching 1,000 inhabitants per hectare, about four times the average density of the city (Municipio di Venezia 1881, 35; Calabi 1991,235). Nevertheless, the overall social composition of the three samples was rather similar and equally depressed. The large majority of the Jews in the Ghetto were day laborers, porters, peddlers, small artisans, and shopkeepers. Inhabitants of the two parishes were mainly fishermen, boatmen, porters, and day laborers. In Giudecca, there were also a fairly large number of hemp workers, both male and female. Women worked as bead stringers, seamstresses, and hatand glove-makers, and many were employed in a tobacco factory. In contrast, Jewish women, especially married ones, did not usually work. In 1869, 82 percent ofthe inhabitants of the parish of Angelo Raffaele were illiterate, by far the highest percentage in the city. In Giudecca, the illiterates accounted for 56 percent of the total population. Although these were the poorest neighborhoods of the city, Venice itself was characterized by widespread poverty. After the fall of the aristocrati c regime in 1797, Venice had experienced a prolonged economie and demographic crisis (Zalin 1969). In a few years, its population fell from about 140,000 to fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, mainly as a consequence of massive outmigration. A slow recovery started in the late 1830s, but it was interrupted by the revolution of 1848, which ended up in the long siege by the Austrian army and the disastrous cholera epidemie of 1849. The 1850s were probably the worst period in the whole century, 114 marked by repeated cholera and measles epidemics and by the severe economie crisis of 1854/55, when com prices almost tripled. It was only in the late 1860s, when Venice joined the Kingdom of Italy, that we can see some evidence of generai improvement (Derosas 2002a). Nonetheless, in 1865, Venice stilI appeared to Howells's ([1866] 2001) eyes as a "gloomy and dejected city." Such hardships were directly mirrored by infant mortality. From 1850 to 1869, the parish registers of Santa Eufemia recorded 1,923 live births and 607 infant deaths-31.6 percent. In the same period, Angelo Raffaele recorded 3,224 live births and 1,030 infant deaths-32 percent. The period 1853-1855 was particularly dramatic, when almost one newborn out of two died in the first year of life. Overall, infant deaths accounted for about 40 percent of ali deaths registered in the two parishes. In the Jewish community, there were 197 infant deaths out of 1,409 live births (14 percent), and the former did not reach 20 percent of alI deaths. Some factors that explain the Jewish advantage were also present in the Venetian case. For instance, although the city's welfare institutions were numerous and widespread (Bembo 1859; Bertoli 1977), in many respects poor Jews enjoyed a more favorable condition than their Catholic counterparts. Periodically, the community board provided them with money, clothing, blankets, new straw mattresses, fuel, and medicines. Jews also received free medicaI care (Pardo 1965). As Howells ([1866] 2001) stated, in Venice "the doctors are very numerous, and a considerable number of them are Hebrews," including the pioneers of pediatrics and public hygiene, such as Cesare Musatti (1876, 1877), Giacinto Namias (1856), and Raffaele Vivante (1904; see also Somma 1981). After 1844, a poorhouse and retirement home guaranteed some earning to the unemployed and offered a shelter to the elderly poor: the retirement home is stili a working concept. It wasn't until 1886 that specific assistance to women after childbirth was offered. However, a kindergarten with a large garden was available in the first half of the century, which contrasted sharply with the dreary places where Catholic children were kept while their mothers were at workindeed, they were "waiting rooms of death," according to a Jewish doctor who urged the municipality to open and fund new and healthier kindergartens (Musatti 1877; Luzzatto Voghera, Finzi, and Szabados 1999; Filippini 1999). Finally, the scholastic system was particularly well developed. Although the Jews had been admitted to public schools since 1820 (Berengo 1987), they preferred to attend either the community religious school (Beit Midrash) or any of the 24 small private schools in the Ghetto, while the richest families provided tutors for their children (Luzzatto Voghera 1999; Luzzatto Voghera, Finzi, and Szabados 1999). Furthermore, after 1822 the community board financed a school offering free education to poor girls. Although the school's explicit purpose was to provi de the HISTORICAL METHODS wealthiest families with adequately educated servants, it ended up enabling Jewish women to become considerably more literate than Catholic women. Considering their social organization and institutional welfare, there is little doubt that the Venetian Jews, especially the poorest ones, were in a much better position than their Catholic counterparts. This is not at alI surprising, when one considers a small highly integrated community of two thousand, striking social inequalities notwithstanding, in a frequently hostile setting and in perpetuaI struggle for its own survival. However, when it comes to other aspects of the Jewish lifestyle, especially demographic behavior, most differences between Jews and Catholics disappear. For example, Jewish and Catholic sexual behavior was very similar. Illegitimacy rates, for instance, were even higher among Jews than Catholics: 4.9 percent of the births recorded in the population registers were illegitimate, whereas the corresponding percentage for Angelo Raffaele and Santa Eufemia was 3.9. If we extend the count to the whole Jewish community, the figure drops to 3.5, as one would expect, but it is not a big change. In both cases, such proportions appear quite low: according to official statistics, during the same period in Venice 7.3 percent of alI births were illegitimate, but such a figure probably also inc1udes children abandoned at the city foundling hospital (Municipio di Venezia 1881), a large number of whom were legitimate (Federigo 1832; Grandi 1991). Indeed, for many reasons, unmarried Catholic women were probably much more inclined to abandon their children than were their Jewish counterparts, but this fact should not significantly bias the results. On the other hand, illegitimacy itself was related to premarital sexual relations. Also from this point of view, the Jewish and Catholic samples give very similar results: 29.4 percent of first-born children in the Ghetto were fruit of a premarital conception, whereas the share in the two parishes was 27.1 percent. Even more unexpected are the results concerning fertility. As mentioned above, the Jews have been included among the "forerunners" of fertility control (Livi Bacci 1986), a behavior directly connected to lower infant mortality, although priority in the process and direction of causality are still under debate (Taylor, Newman, and Kelly 1976; Scrimshaw 1978; van de Walle 1986; Woods, Watterson, and Woodward 1988, 1989; Nault, Desjardins, and Légaré 1990; Langner 1996). Anyway, although Jewish fertility was generally lower, this is not the case in Venice. The total maritai fertility rate at 25 (TMFR25) is 5.4 children for the Jews, versus 5.2 for the Catholics (Breschi, Derosas, and Manfredini 2000): a number that is considerably higher than those computed for the Jewish communities of Pitigliano (Livi Bacci 1978) and Florence (Sardi Bucci 1976) in the fll'st half of the nineteenth century, when an average of 3.7 children was expected from a woman marrying at 25. Age at first marriage was also the same: the average marrying age for women was 25.4 in the two parishes and 25 in the Ghetto. 115 Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 Such a similarity between Venetian Jews and Catholics is confirmed by the length of birth intervals. U sing births of parity 2 to 5, the median length for both is 23.5 months, a relatively short one, typical of a high-pressure demographic regime and positively correlated to high infant mortality. One should also consider that here only live-births spacing is taken into account. Because Jewish mothers were apparently subject to much higher miscarriage rates, as we shall see, the actual frequency of their pregnancies was even higher than that. It is also worth noting that while for the Catholics the death of the previous child sensibly shortened such an interval, that was not so for the Jews. In fact, for Catholics such an event reduced the median interval from 25.3 months to 20.3 months, whereas for Jews the difference was only one month, from 23.9 to 22.9. The effect of the interruption of breastfeeding is quite c1ear, although it seems difficult to draw evidence about the length of time spent breastfeeding. Descriptive Measures of Infant Mortality Overall, the Venetian case only partly fits the generai framework suggested to explain the Jewish advantage in infant and childhood mortality. Indeed, in comparison with Catholics, the cultural level of the Jews was higher, especially among the poor and the female population. The assistance provided by the community was more effective and widespread, and the respect for hygienic and nutritional rules was guaranteed by social control. On the other hand, as far as demographic behavior is concerned, hardly any difference exists between Jews and Catholics. In particular, fertility and possibly the duration of breastfeeding are exactly the same in the two groups. Thus, these factors cannot be used to explain mortality differentials as large as those we have previously noted. To reach a more satisfying explanation of such differentials, a closer look at mortality patterns is necessary. I will first present some descriptive measures and turn later to more complex models. Age-specific infant and childhood mortality. Table l contrasts the probabilities of death (q) by religion and sex at different ages, using population register data. The gap between the two groups is indeed remarkable, the death probabilities of the Catholics being twice or more those of the Jews up to age 15, and then dec1ining with age. The number of events after age 5 for the Jewish subgroup is so small, however, that any computation should be taken cautiously. Neonatal mortality. Further focusing on the first year of life allows us to highlight both the components of infant mortality and the possible biases introduced by different registration procedures. Let us first consider perinatal and neonatal mortality. These should reflect the endogenous component of infant mortality, although, as John Landers (1993, 139-41) has shown and as we shall also see later, their pattern of variability appears too sensitive to environmental factors to be entirely related to purely endogenous causes. Table 2 compares data on the Jewish community as a whole, the parish of Santa Eufemia from 1859 to 1869, and the entire city of Venice from 1884 to 1893. Such a selection reflects data availability. The population register does not report stillbirths or miscarriages, which are quite carefully recorded in the Jewish community registers-in Santa Eufemia registers since 1859 but none at all for Angelo Raffaele. Communal statistics report such data only since 1884. In alI cases, the completeness and reliability of information are rather difficult to evaluate. These results are quite surprising and require cautious interpretation. The number of miscarriages among Jews- TABLE 1. Probabilities or Death (q.) and Survivors to 15th Anniversary by Religion, Sex, and Age: Venice, 1850-69 Age (years) Sex O 1-4 5-9 10-14 Survivors to 15 57.0 50.2 53.6 25.5 23.0 24.2 491 530 510 [22.7] [17.3] [20.2] [8.0] [19.0] [13.1] 749 714 731 Catholics Male Female Total 290.3 253.8 272.8 247.0 235.1 241.2 Jews Male Female Total 94.5 138.7 116.6 146.5 140.6 143.7 Source. Population register. Va1ues in square brackets computed with fewer than IO events. 116 HISTORICAL recorded as "fetuses"-is remarkably high: l out of 10 live births, twice the proportion of Santa Eufemia and nine times that of the whole city. However, such a result is also very close to that found by Israel Zoller (1924) for the Jews of Trieste in the late nineteenth century. On the other hand, the number of stillbirths-only 3 cases in 20 years-seems too low to be reliable. Registration criteri a probably played a much greater role than substantial differences here. It is well known that religious reasons encouraged Catholic parents to pretend that their children had been baptized, notwithstanding their "dubious" vitality, because baptized children would have been granted a pIace in heaven.7 As a result, stillbirths and, in some cases, even fetal deaths were improperly recorded in parish registers as infant deaths. On the other hand, for the Jews, the full acknowledgment of a child's individuality, at least for males, took piace only at circumcision, when the infant received his Hebrew name. One might wonder therefore whether deaths that took piace before circumcision could have simply been record ed as "fetal deaths," that is, as miscarriages at a late gestational age. As a matter of fact, in the Jewish community registers, only 2 deaths took pIace on the very first day of life, whereas for Santa Eufemia the ratio was 52 per thousand. If one considers mortality only in the first week, ratios appear at least comparable-12.8 per thousand for the Jews and 86.1 for Santa Eufemia-though they are still extremely far apart. Perinatal mortality, including late fetal deaths, stillbirths, and deaths in the first week, somehow balances such sources of bias: the Jewish ratio is nonetheless still lower by about TABLE 2. Perinatal and Neonatal Mortality: Jewish community, 1850-69 one-third in comparison with that computed for Santa Eufemia. Such results should suggest some caution in comparing infant mortality rates. Consider that in the two parishes, deaths on the first day of life represent 10 percent of all infant deaths, whereas such deaths make up only 0.7 percent in the Jewish sample. Nonetheless, the gap is sufficiently relevant that it cannot be merely derived from a registration bias. On the other hand, such cleavage holds even in the days following the first. Also excluding the first day of life, mortality rates in the first month are 40.7 per thousand for the Jews and 96.7 for Santa Eufemia, reaching 135 per thousand in Angelo Raffaele. From the very beginning of life, a sharp inequality characterizes the two samples. Postneonatal mortality. The same inequality, although attenuated, is maintained throughout the first year of life. Figure l shows the age-specific mortality rates by completed month, based on the population register as well as on linked vital records data (for the whole Jewish community). To make reading easier, the first month is omitted. As one would expect, the fairly small number of events for the Ghetto sample makes the rates quite unstable. Nonetheless, the three series follow the same pattern. Overall, the Jewish advantage is kept at all ages, although it is sensibly reduced after the first month. The gap seems to shorten from the sixth to the eighth month only. A tentative explanation might be that Jewish mothers wean their children earlier, which would contradict unanimous witnesses Jews and Catholics Santa Eufemia, 1859-69 Jews/ Catholics Venice, 1884-93 Absolute values Live births Miscarriages Stillbirths Deaths, 1st day Deaths, 2d-7th day Deaths, 1st week 1,410 136 3 2 16 18 1,080 55 30 56 37 93 41,551 474 1,812 Ratios (%) Miscarriages/live births N atimortali ty Fetal mortality Perinatal mortality Source. Parish and Jewish community Venezia, 1884-93. 96.45 2.13 89.74 101.36 METHODS 50.93 27.78 72.96 152.79 death registers; Rassegna 1.89 0.08 1.23 0.66 statistica trimestrale 11.41 43.61 52.15 del Comune di Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 117 25 'C ; 20 VI ::l o ~ 15 \ Ali Jews :;; Ghetto Jews c. g 10 :l: c " "-" \ " 5 " , --" " A I ~V 3 2 " ~ 4 Two parishes I ",.- 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Age in Monlhs FIGURE 1. Age-specific mortality rates, by completed about a Jewish preference for prolonged breastfeeding. Anyway, notwithstanding the differences in levels, the agespecific mortality patterns are quite similar in all the samples considered. Causes of infant deaths. Jews and Catholics show unexpected similarities concerning the causes of death. Table 3 displays the distribution of the main causes of infant deaths for the two parishes and the Jewish community as a whole. Deaths in the first day of life, for congenital malformations, difficulties during delivery, prematurity, or immaturity are omitted. For the reasons mentioned above, they would have introduced some bias in the results. Needless to say, such data must be considered cautiously. As George Alter and Ann Carmichael (1996, 1997) stressed, translating causes of death drawn from historical sources into contemporary c1assifications can be highly misleading. The limits of diagnostic capacity and medicaI knowledge, a mainly symptomatic approach, and obscure terminology make interpretation uncertain and hazardous. TABLE 3. Causes of Infant Death (%) Malady Convulsions Chronic malnutrition Gastrointestinal disease Respiratory disease Infectious disease Tuberculosis Others, unidentified Total Jewish community Santa Eufemia! Angelo Raffaele 31.5 23.2 19.3 8.3 6.6 6.1 5.0 100 41.5 25.5 13.6 3.5 5.5 4.0 6.4 100 Source. Parish and Jewish community ters of the city sanitary officer. death registers; death regis- month (first not included). This is particularly true for the two main causes indicated in table 3. Convulsions clearly cannot be considered a cause of death but rather a symptom of another underlying cause, ranging from trauma to infection. If one considers the improper feeding practices then commonly used, frequently including opiates, intoxication should not be ruled out. However, deaths by (or with) convulsions were mainly concentrated in the first month of life and had a very quick course, lasting one or two days at most, perhaps indicating the outcome of some infection. A large share was undoubtedly due to tetanus, frequently transmitted when the umbilical cord was cut with dirty tools (Boerma and Stroh 1993; Smucker et al. 1980). As for chronic malnutrition, it is indeed a cause of death and is stili the most important cause of infant death in the world today. However, it represents the final outcome of a process of progressive organic debilitation and increased immunodeficiency, caused by a large number of reasons, and slow degeneration for lack of adequate and effective treatment (van Norren and van Vianen 1986). In the Venetian case, death by malnutrition carne after a long illness, usually lasting a couple of months. It seems that death occurred almost exclusively during the second semester of life, clearly showing a relationship with weaning and improper feeding practices as was the case with gastrointestinal diseases. Together, these afflictions represented about 40 percent of all infant deaths both for the Jews and the Catholics and the large majority of deaths in the second semester. In addition to the problems related to the quality of information on causes of death, the substantial overlapping of the two distributions is nonetheless astonishing. Because the gap between Jewish and Catholic infant mortality was so dramatic, one might expect that the causes of death were also different. Gretchen Condran (1987) proposed to abandon the idea of a single process of mortality decline taking pIace in the demographic transition as too simplistic, suggesting that, on the contrary, there were several transitions in time and space, each connected to specific causes and 118 HISTORICAL factors. Apparently, this was not the case for Venice. The Venetian Jews were some 40 years in advance in the process of mortality decline, but their mortality patterns were mostly the same as those of the Catholics. Although Jewish infants died much less frequently than did Catholic infants, the causes of death were the same. Even chronic malnutrition, typical of social environments characterized by deprivation, ignorance, and poor hygiene (van Norren and van Vianen 1986), as well as gastrointestinal disease, were as significant in the Jewish disease profile as they were for the Catholics. Comparing Infant Mortality Patterns: An Event-History Approach The search for explanations of the Jewish advantage has generated poor results thus far. Besides some aspects in the welfare system and literacy, for alI other factors, and especially for demographic behavior, we hardly found any difference at alI between Catholics and Jews. We will now take into account a variety of factors that could affect mortality, such as climate, social standing, economie conjuncture, family composition, and the like. For the following analysis, I will estimate several hazards models, adopting the semiparametric approach of the Cox regression. In this approach, the instantaneous risk of dying at any age t is the product of a function of t and a function of the explanatory variables and unknown parameters. The effect of the covariates is to act multiplicatively on the risk of dying. Such covariates can be either fixed or timeinvariant, like sex, or subject to changes through time, or time-varying, such as c1imate, prices, and the like. The event-history approach is designed to take such variations through time into proper account. The generai form of the models is the following: r(t, X) = h(t) * exp(bX) where r(t, X) is the instantaneous risk of dying at age t for children with covariate vector X, h(t) is the so-called baseline rate at age t, and X is a vector of covariates. A peculiarity of Cox models is that the shape of the baseline hazard is left unspecified (hence the semiparametric qualification). Furthermore, they require that the effects of the covariates do not change through time (Cox 1972; Blossfeld and Rohwer 1995). The first set of models pools together the two parishes and the population of the Ghetto, using data drawn from the population register. The covariates included in the models are sex; mother's age at birth; birth spacing and vitality of the previous born at conception of the index child; presence of parents; head's soci al status;8 current season as a proxy of the prevailing climatic conditions;9 the average price of wheat in the three previous months (logged), as a proxy of short-term economic stress; and, finally, religion. METHODS I estimate the effects of these covariates in three different phases of infancy: the first month of life; lO from the second to the sixth month, and from the seventh month to the second year completed. The adoption of such a segmentation is required by the very different nature of the risks a child is exposed to in the early phases of life, relating, respectively, to those criticai moments immediately after birth, to the peri od of breastfeeding, and, finally, to weaning and the introduction to ordinary food when contacts with the external environment become more intense. Contemporary physicians witnessed that Venetian mothers tended to wean their children rather early, frequently before the sixth month, adopting some inappropriate method of mixed feeding (see Valatelli 1803, 140-44; Federigo 1832, 132-34; Musatti 1876,40-41,64-65, 110-11). Whereas some covariates will keep their effect unchanged throughout the whole period, other results will be relevant only at certain ages. I also expect that some covariates, the current season in particular, will change their effect dramatically at different ages. Overall, it should emerge that the protection provided by the mother and the family progressively disappears with a child's growth, whereas the influence of social and economic conditions becomes progressively more important (see Derosas 2002b for a more detailed argument). Two kinds of complementary questions interest us: Did the Jews maintain their advantage even after controlling for all such factors? Did such factors have the same effect for both ethnic groupS?11 To answer these questions, I will estimate the three models-one for each age span-first omitting the covariate concerning ethnicity and then including it. A chi-square test of the difference of the log-likelihood statistic in the nested models allows us to test the null hypothesis that the coefficient of the ethnicity covariate in the full model is zero. Furthermore, a comparison of the two sets of estimates should highlight a possible interaction between ethnicity and any other covariate, suggesting a confounding effect related to the former. Table 4 displays the results of the estimations, reporting the average value or the percentage distribution for each covariate, the exponentiated coefficients, and the p value associated with each estimate. The coefficients for each covariate measure the relative risks of childhood death in a given category as a proportion of the risk run by the children in the reference category, which is set to 1. A relative risk of 0.605 for middle-c1ass infants means that their risk of a neonatal death was 60.5 percent, or 39.5 percent lower than the risk run by children of day laborers. A detailed discussion of the results has already been given elsewhere (Derosas 1999; Breschi and Derosas 2000; Derosas 2002b; Oris, Derosas, and Breschi 2004) so I shall limit myself to emphasizing a few points. Conditions at birth have a relevant effect on the risk of dying, especially, as one would expect, for neonatal mortality. Children born to mothers over the age of 35 run a risk 119 Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 TABLE 4. Hazards Models or the Avg. Risk or Dying, 0-730 Days Exp. coeff. p value Exp. coeff. p value 0-30 days Sex Male Female Mother's age 25-30 < 25 30-35 > 35 Unknown Previous birth interval and vitality > 24 mos., alive > 24 mos., dead < 24 mos., alive < 24 mos., dead First birth Unknown Mother Present Absent Father Present Absent Head's social status Day laborer Wage earner Artisan, shopkeeper Middle, upper class Season Winter Spring Summer Fal1 Religion Catholic Jew Logged wheat price 0.52 0.48 l 0.859 0.090 l 0.869 0.117 0.22 0.19 0.20 0.37 0.01 l 0.919 1.128 1.489 1.924 0.587 0.408 0.001 0.084 l 0.936 1.141 1.512 1.953 0.669 0.365 0.001 0.078 0.21 0.12 0.24 0.22 0.16 0.06 l 1.000 1.084 1.779 1.536 0.731 N.I. 0.96 0.04 l 0.873 0.614 l 0.889 0.664 0.40 0.30 0.24 0.06 l 0.848 0.744 0.605 0.120 0.013 0.028 l 0.838 0.803 0.636 0.096 0.067 0.048 0.24 0.26 0.27 0.22 l 0.742 0.256 0.491 N.I. 0.005 0.000 0.000 l 0.744 0.253 0.492 0.006 0.000 0.000 0.798 l 0.269 0.968 0.000 0.777 0.91 0.09 2.76 0.971 504 282.37 -4035.16 177.94 18 Events Person-years Partial MLL 2 X df -2* diff(MLL) 0.998 0.585 0.000 0.009 0.264 0.000 l 0.951 1.105 1.687 1.495 0.788 N.I. 504 282.37 -4018.66 210.96 19 33 0.775 0.497 0.000 0.015 0.397 0.000 0.000 31-180 days Sex Male Female Mother's age 25-30 < 25 0.51 0.49 l 0.892 0.378 l 0.896 0.395 0.22 0.20 l 0.632 0.048 l 0.642 0.056 (table continues) HISTORICAL 120 TABLE 4. Continued Avg. Exp. coeff. p value Exp. coeff. p value 31-180 days Mother's age 30-35 > 35 Unknown Previous birth interval and vitality > 24 mos., alive > 24 mos., dead < 24 mos., alive < 24 mos., dead First birth Unknown Mother Present Absent Father Present Absent Head's social status Day laborer Wage earner Artisan, shopkeeper Middle, upper class Season Winter Spring Summer Fall Religion Catholic Jew Logged wheat price 0.21 0.36 0.01 0.924 1.202 0.585 0.693 0.274 0.455 0.935 1.217 0.616 0.736 0.243 0.500 0.21 0.11 0.24 0.20 0.15 0.08 1 1.237 1.118 1.652 1.179 0.988 0.362 0.592 0.010 0.508 0.969 1 1.208 1.144 1.612 1.174 1.023 0.418 0.517 0.015 0.519 0.942 0.98 0.02 l 2.162 0.068 l 2.068 0.086 0.97 0.03 l 1.312 0.420 l 1.333 0.394 0.40 0.29 0.24 0.07 1 0.918 0.758 0.519 0.576 0.109 0.059 1 0.912 0.798 0.537 0.543 0.195 0.075 0.25 0.23 0.26 0.26 l 0.780 0.853 0.777 N.I. 0.187 0.372 0.162 l 0.784 0.853 0.774 0.194 0.372 0.156 0.959 1 0.508 0.983 0.024 0.914 0.90 0.10 2.76 0.992 241 1315.99 -1930.29 32.18 19 Events Person-years Partial MLL X2 di -2* diff(MLL) 0.030 241 1315.99 -1927.2 38.36 20 6.18 0.008 0.013 181-730 days Sex Male Female Mother's age 25-30 < 25 30-35 > 35 Unknown Previous birth interva1 and vitality > 24 mos., alive 0.51 0.49 1 0.918 0.276 l 0.918 0.279 0.23 0.20 0.21 0.36 0.01 l 0.907 0.947 0.908 1.230 0.430 0.645 0.361 0.666 1 0.927 0.957 0.916 1.284 0.542 0.708 0.407 0.601 0.20 (table continues) METHODS Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 121 TABLE 4. Continued Exp. coeff. Avg. p value Exp. coeff. p value 181-730 days Previous birth interval and vitality > 24 mos., dead < 24 mos., alive < 24 mos., dead First birth Unknown Mother Present Absent Father Present Absent Head's soci al status Day laborer Wage earner Artisan, shopkeeper Middle, upper c1ass Season Winter Spring Summer Fall Religion Catholic Jew Logged wheat price Events Person-years Parti al MLL X2 df -2* diff(MLL) 0.11 0.24 0.19 0.15 0.10 1.048 1.148 1.423 1.072 1.010 0.757 0.270 0.005 0.645 0.954 1.025 1.171 1.392 1.059 1.005 0.872 0.209 0.008 0.703 0.975 0.98 0.02 l 1.413 0.225 l 1.363 0.278 0.97 0.03 l 1.118 0.599 l 1.144 0.527 0.39 0.30 0.24 0.07 l 0.692 0.690 0.634 0.000 0.000 0.009 l 0.685 0.721 0.653 0.000 0.002 0.015 0.26 0.26 0.25 0.23 l 0.942 1.923 1.324 0.639 0.000 0.018 l 0.941 1.924 1.327 0.633 0.000 0.017 0.000 l 0.591 1.474 0.001 0.000 0.89 0.11 2.76 1.473 647 4165.37 -5052.82 106.5 19 0.000 647 4165.37 -5046.89 118.37 20 11.86 0.000 0.000 Note. N.I. = not included. MLL = Maximum Log Likelihood. of dying in their first month 50 percent higher than those born to mothers aged 25 to 30. Birth spacing also has a strong impact on survival chances. When the birth interval is shorter than two years and the preceding child is dead at the conception of the index one, the risk of dying rises by 70-80 percent. Interestingly enough, the negative influence of the previous child's death persists throughout late infancy. As for the f1rstborns, they are also exposed to greater risks of dying but only during the first month of life. Finally, there is a clear advantage for females in the first semester, although p values are on the borderline. The absence of the mother has a strong negative effect, which is not at all unexpected. However, the effect is true only for the breastfeeding peri od. One might argue that the fact that the mother's absence after the sixth month has no negative consequences on the child's well-being indicates that the mother's care declined abruptly after weaning, leaving such a charge to, or sharing it with, other members of the family. Indeed, as shown elsewhere (Derosas 1999; Breschi and Derosas 2000; Derosas 2002c), in the second semester of life, an older sister's presence is more important than that of the mother herself. This finding is consistent with evidence from contemporary and historical populations in Asia (Skinner 1997) but has not yet received much attention in the European context. Older sisters were usually responsible for the care of their younger siblings, while their mothers were busy cooking or doing piecework at home. When the first public nurseries were established in 122 Venice in 1853, one of the main reasons given by the municipal authority was the need to relieve young girls of the burden of caring for their younger siblings, a situation that often caused them serious health problems (Filippini 1999, 103). As for fathers, their presence is apparently ineffective. However, the coefficients show an increase in the probability of death in the hazards models of the risk of dying from 30-180 days and from 180-730 days (although p values are not significant), suggesting that the presence of a breadwinner became more important as the child grew up. As shown elsewhere (Derosas 2002d), the lower the socioeconomic status of the household, the more dramatic the consequences of the father's death for his children. Differential mortality caused by social status is also quite strong (Derosas 2003). However, estimates are statistically significant only in the first month and in late infancy. The effects of social environment are evident in childbirth as well as during and after weaning, when the protection provided by the mother is not yet as, or no more effective than, it is during breastfeeding. Indeed, in the second age bracket only children of middle and upper classes enjoy a remarkable advantage, with a relative hazard of dying that is about half that of children from the lowest soci al stratum (p value is very close to .05). The other social groups also have smaller advantages, although they are statistically nonsignificant. It seems that short-term economie stresses, as expressed here by changes in the logged price of wheat, have a remarkable repercussion on child well-being only in late infancy (hazards mode l on the risk of dying from 180-730 days), an increase by one unit raising the risk of dying by 47 percent. Climatic conditions-as proxied here by the current season-also have a heavy impact on mortality. Furthermore, they change dramatically in the different age groups. As far as neonatal mortality is concerned, the hazards characteristic of children born in the summertime are only 25 percent those of children born in winter.12 The advantage is also very strong for those born in the fall (50 percent) and the spring (75 percent). Again, during breastfeeding, external factors lose their importance; no season appears to clearly favor infants' survival, although coefficients stili work against winter. In late infancy, the effect of environmental conditions becomes preeminent again, although the seasonal pattern is now reversed. Winter becomes, in fact, the most favorable season, whereas the greatest dangers, related to exposure to gastroenteric diseases, are concentrated in summer and fallo The relative hazard for summer is more than twice that of winter.13 We can now turn to our main questiono Is the Jewish advantage a kind of by-product of any of such factors, or does it keep its relevance even after controlling for all of them? Indeed, as the likelihood ratio test shows, in all models the inclusion of the covariate concerning religion significantly improves the overall fit. On the one hand, being a HISTORICAL METHODS member of the Jewish group is clearly protective: the relative risk is only 27 percent that of Catholic children in the first month, 50 percent up to the sixth month, and 59 percent in late infancy, confirming the results of descriptive analysis. On the other hand, none of the other coefficients is affected by the introduction of religion as a covariate, clearly indicating the absence of interactions between religion and the other covariates. The Jewish advantage does not result from favorite social conditions, or from better coping with climatic harshness, or from better management of intense fertili ty. A second set of estimations, whose purpose is to test whether the two ethnic groups were affected in the same way by the same factors, provides further confirmation. Thus, Iran the same models separately for the two ethnic groups, and to make the analysis more consistent, I also included the Jewish community as a whole, using linked vital records from the community registers to obtain longitudinal information at the individuaI level. In this case, information at the household level is not reliable and has consequently been dropped from the analysis. The only covariates kept were sex, soci al status, current season, and current wheat price. Results are displayed in table 5. Most results concerning the Ghetto obviously suffer from the small sample size and should be interpreted very cautiously. For instance, the disadvantaged position of females in the first semester, confirming descriptive analysis, is contradicted by the corresponding estimate about the Jewish community, where males and females are on the same level; on the other hand, a clear female advantage is only peculiar to the Catholic sample. As for the role of social status, it is worth stressing that its relative weight in differentiating mortality is even stronger among Jews than among Catholics, both in the fll'st month and in late infancy. In both cases, the relative hazard of the children of the Jewish elite is 40 to 50 percent that of their poorest counterparts, whereas for the Catholics such a hazard is about two-thirds. This difference can be c1early appreciated in figure 2, which contrasts the relative risks of the Jewish and Catholic elites.l4 In a way, the gap between the paired histograms is a direct measure of differenti al social inequality in the two groups. On the other hand, it is worth noting that in the breastfeeding period only the children of the Catholic elite keep their advantage, whereas soci al status does not make any difference in Jewish mortality. When it comes to seasonality, the behavior of the three samples is again very similar, as long as the first month and late infancy are considered, with winter being extremely dangerous at first and then extremely beneficiaI, according to the pattern shown above (figure 3). Furthermore, in both Jewish samples, winter is also extremely dangerous during the breastfeeding period, whereas for the Catholics such an effect is much smaller and nonsignificant. Although it is difficult to give a clear-cut explanation, such a result is consistent with the greater 123 Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 TABLE 5. Hazards Models of the Risk or Dying, 0-730 Days Santa Eufemia! Angelo Raffaele Avg. Exp. coeff. p value Jewish community Ghetto Jews Avg. Exp. coeff. p Exp. coeff. p value value Avg. 0.51 0.49 l 1.042 0.883 0.14 0.09 0.54 0.23 l 0.496 0.615 0.389 0.231 0.173 0.043 0.25 0.23 0.26 0.26 2.76 l 0.394 0.207 0.489 1.505 0.017 0.001 0.043 0.320 0-30 days Sex Male Female Head's social status Day laborer Wage earner Artisan, shopkeeper Middle, upper class Season Winter Spring Summer Fall Logged wheat price 0.52 0.48 l 0.856 0.087 0.51 0.49 l 2.345 0.158 0.41 0.31 0.22 0.06 1 0.819 0.770 0.644 0.060 0.032 0.054 0.38 0.19 0.43 N.I. l 0.326 0.954 0.302 0.935 0.24 0.26 0.27 0.22 2.76 1 0.733 0.253 0.488 0.973 0.004 0.000 0.000 0.809 0.24 0.27 0.26 0.23 2.76 l 0.835 0.186 0.442 1.360 0.777 0.126 0.334 0.691 Events Person-years Partial MLL 491 253.98 -3906.35 122.62 8 X2 df 13 28.39 -72.25 7.62 7 0.000 51 113.01 -358.04 21.38 8 0.367 0.006 31-180 days Sex Male Fema1e Head' s social status Day laborer Wage earner Artisan, shopkeeper Middle, upper class Season Winter Spring Summer Fall Logged wheat price 0.51 0.49 l 0.842 0.194 0.50 0.50 1 3.143 0.089 0.50 0.50 l 1.054 0.842 0.41 0.31 0.22 0.06 l 0.830 0.765 0.487 0.230 0.130 0.050 0.28 0.19 0.42 0.10 1 3.980 1.606 1.388 0.104 0.585 0.790 0.14 0.10 0.53 0.24 1 1.188 1.410 1.046 0.776 0.438 0.928 0.25 0.23 0.26 0.26 2.76 1 0.881 0.982 0.879 1.035 0.517 0.920 0.491 0.839 0.25 0.24 0.26 0.25 2.76 1 0.195 0.091 0.091 0.737 0.041 0.025 0.024 0.658 0.26 0.24 0.25 0.25 2.76 l 0.303 0.360 0.256 1.406 0.002 0.006 0.001 0.376 Events Person-years Parti al MLL 229 1177.42 -1819.65 8.75 8 X2 df 12 138.57 -60.45 18.9 8 0.364 57 534.25 -397.98 22.73 8 0.015 0.004 181-730 days Sex Male Female Head's socia1 status Day laborer Wage earner Artisan, shopkeeper Middle, upper class 51.00 49.00 l 0.909 0.243 52.10 47.90 l 1.011 0.972 50.40 49.60 l 1.109 0.587 38.70 31.90 22.70 6.70 l 0.647 0.717 0.688 0.000 0.002 0.037 27.80 18.10 43.50 10.70 1 1.517 0.785 0.425 0.308 0.534 0.264 25.50 24.50 25.30 24.80 l 1.067 0.630 0.504 0.848 0.072 0.029 (table continues) 124 HISTORICAL METHODS TABLE S. Continued Santa Eufemia/Angelo Raffaele Exp. coeff. Avg. Ghetto Jews Exp. coeff. p value Avg. Jewish community p value Avg. 0.797 0.224 0.973 0.615 13.30 8.80 53.40 24.50 2.76 Exp. coeff. p value 181-730 days Season Winter Spring Summer Fall Logged wheat price 25.80 25.10 25.10 24.00 2.76 Events Person -years Partial MLL 606 3717.82 -4675.00 88.15 8 X2 di Note. MLL = Maximum l 0.945 1.945 1.357 1.539 0.665 0.000 0.013 0.000 0.000 • Jewish community FIGURE 2. Hazard children (ref.: children l 0.882 1.675 0.984 1.222 41 447.55 -232.02 7.52 8 0.482 l 0.898 1.947 1.119 1.397 110 1738.96 -774.41 19.77 8 0.728 0.012 0.701 0.198 0.011 Log Likelihood. Cl Two parishes 0-30 days 26.10 24.30 24.80 24.80 2.76 180-730 days ratios: Middle- and upper-c1ass of day laborers = l). weight of respiratory diseases among Jewish children (8.3 percent of ali infant deaths) than among Catholics (3.5 percent). Clearly, even though free firewood was distributed (Pardo 1965), it was neither sufficient nor effective in protecting against the harsh climate. What about Culture? A (Not So) "Residual" Interpretation of the Jewish Advantage Event-history analysis confirms in much greater detail the results of descriptive analysis. Although the hazards models also highlight several interesting features of the demographic regime and of the factors underlying infant mortality differentials, none of these can be specifically associated with a Jewish advantage. Indeed, ethnicity itself is a most powerful factor of differentiation but has no interaction with any other covariate included in the models. In other words, although the scale of Jewish infant mortality is half that of Catholics, the patterns of mortality are surprisingly similar. So are the distributions of age-specific rates, with the somewhat dubious exception of neonatal mortality and of causes of death as well as the effects of climatic conditions and of social inequality. Whereas a modern evolution of infant mortality should result in an attenuation of such factors, it is surprising to find that their effects were relatively stronger for Jews than for Catholics. In sum, the reduction in infant mortality achieved by the Jews was generalized, neither selective nor specialized in any particular direction. Thus, from a statistical viewpoint, we cannot find a better covariate than "religion" itself to fit into our models. Perhaps this conclusion is due to lack of relevant information. Nevertheless, such an outcome should hardly be considered unexpected. Although many Venetian Jews lived in their old neighborhood or somewhat nearby, they did not live in a world apart. The commonalities they shared with the rest of the Venetian population were more numerous than the differences: social structure, economic conditions, climate, environment, diseases, and medicaI knowledge were the same for Jews and Catholics, and their variations and differences had similar repercussions on both. Sexual behavior and fertility were the same as well. None of these factors can explain the differentials in infant mortality. Because it is usually argued-though never empirically demonstrated-that the Jewish advantage was due to some specific feature of their social organization or demographic Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 125 -+- 2 Cath.0-30 -e---*- Jewish comm. 0-30 ---+-- Cath.180-730 __ .. Ghetto 0-30 _ _ Ghetto 180-730 - - ... - - Jewish comm. 180-730 o Spring Summer Fall FIGURE 3. Hazard ratios: Season (ref.: winter behavior, the conclusion that the commonalities were more numerous than the differences is an important achievement of this study. At the same time, the nonspecificity of Jewish mortality patterns also makes any satisfying empirical explanation about the reasons for their advantage quite awkward. Indeed, such an explanation would need to be so generaI to get dangerously cio se to tautology: "Jews enjoyed a lower infant mortality because they were Jews.',15 Paraphrasing Marx's sarcastic criticism of Say's Law, simply resorting to "Jewish culture" for an answer sounds pretty much like using "a tautology, if not a residual," a mere substitution of "culture" for "religion" in the model, which is exactly what anthropologists rightly warn demographers to avoid. l7 However, because we have no better alternative, we can at least try to qualify the way Jewish "culture" made possible so dramatic a reduction of infant mortality levels. My hypothesis is that even though Jewish children were exposed to the same risks as Catholics, the Jews were less vulnerable because they enjoyed a certain careful atte ntion, even dedication, to their health and well-being to a degree that was unusual in Catholic families. Such a hypothesis is not new. As early as 1915, Dr. Henry Ashby, an English physician who practiced in Manchester, explained astonishing differences he observed in infant mortality between Jewish and non-Jewish working-class families. Using less-sophisticated methods and less information, but with the decisive advantage of direct observation, he attributed these differences to the full commitment of Jewish parents to family welfare, the fathers turning over "their entire income to their wives, who in turn = 1). spared no effort to maXlmlze the welfare of their children," granting them "high standards of c1eanliness or medicai care" (Johansson 1987, 60; citing Ashby 1915). On the contrary, no similar behavior could be observed among non-Jewish working-c1ass families, whose earnings were mostly dissipated in pubs and whose children were generally neglected by their parents. As a matter of fact, such an attitude toward childcare was deeply rooted in Jewish culture and often reported in literature. But if Jewish women were widely considered to be "model mothers" (Marks 1994), what about Catholic women? Were they wicked mothers, unmindful of the survivaI of their children? Once things are considered from this standpoint, the focus necessarily shifts from Jewish undermortality to Catholic overmortality. The question of parental attitude toward children is a time-honored one. Historians such as P. Ariés (1973), F. Lebrun (1971), E. Le Roy Ladurie (1975), J. L. Flandrin (1973), E. Shorter (1976), and many others have widely discussed this issue, generally adhering to the thesis of a poor affective involvement of adults in children's fate. Generalizing a concept that was originally proposed by Dr. Ashby himself, Sheila Johansson (1987) argued that in the past a large share of children's deaths were avoidable, owing to parental indifference. Accepting Johansson's line of reasoning, we might say, on the basis of the Venetian comparison, that up to 50 percent of all infant deaths were due to parental neglect and were therefore "technically" avoidable. But were they also "culturally" avoidable? In a recent article, Katherine Lynch (2000) stressed that no child-rearing practice can be understood without making reference to the 126 social and institutional framework in which it takes piace and which shapes cultural values themselves.17 As an exampie, she contrasted the maternal attitudes in a shantytown of contemporary Brazil, as revealed by the illuminating inquiry of Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1992), with those presumably prevalent in European historical populations. According to Scheper-Hughes, in Alto do Cruzeiro, in a context dominated by extreme deprivation, lack of welfare institutions, hyperfertility, and no breastfeeding, mothers decide by themselves about the destiny of their children. Adopting a conscious selection, they let die the children who are believed to be the weakest, those who are perceived to be unable to cope with the hardships of the external world. Such behavior is not fatalistic; rather, it is in its own way a form of human agency, grounded in a peculiar culture of infancy. By contrast, in the European past, shared cultural values and widespread welfare institutions, such as foundling hospitals, should have made that behavior unthinkable. Such a point of view seems, however, far too optimistic, especially in those Catholic Mediterranean countries where such welfare institutions were widespread. Whether life in nineteenth-century urban centers such as Venice, Milan, and Florence was as hard as it is in contemporary Brazil is a question both difficult to answer and perhaps not really meaningful. Certainly, there are several impressive descriptions of the misery and destitution that characterized the poorest neighborhoods in nineteenth-century Venice. PeopIe lived together in tiny houses-lO persons or more crowded into a single room-without running water and sanitation. Excrement was gathered in buckets that were periodically emptied on the ground nearby. Clergymen described their parishioners as the prey of widespread immorality, and the police carefully avoided patrolling such neighborhoods (Derosas 2002a). Welfare institutions could seldom afford to provide food and c10thing and care for the sick and the elderly. Maritai fertility was quite high, especially among the lowest social strata, with a TMFR of day laborers reaching 10.2 (Breschi et al. 2000). Abandonment was practiced by legitimate parents at least as much as by unwed mothers; as a contemporary observer put it, it was the fruit of misery rather than sin (Federigo 1832, 90-91). It seems unrealistic to think that because abandonment was easily available couples simply got rid of excess children to better concentrate their love and attentions on those remaining. I am rather inclined to doubt that abandoning unwanted newborns, whether legitimate or not, ever increased soli citu de toward infants in generaI. Furthermore, as I have argued elsewhere (Derosas 2002c), there is strong evidence to suggest that parents resorted to some kind of overt or covert infanticide of female newborns, depending on the composition by sex and age of the surviving children. A growing number of studies have stressed the importane e of maternal care as a major determinant of infant health and survival. Not only were motherless children HISTORICAL METHODS exposed to exceedingly higher risks of death (see Reher and Gonzalez-Quifiones 2003, and several chapters in Derosas and Oris 2002), but maternal health has also been argued to be the key factor explaining differenti al infant mortality in Victorian England and Wales (Millward and Bell 2001): maternal agency has been seen as paramount in preventing diseases and enhancing survival among infants, especially where overall conditions and environment are poor (Hobcraft, McDonald, and Rutstein 1984, 220; Das Gupta 1990; Reid 200 l, 2002, 2003). As a matter of fact, care provided by Venetian mothers turned out to be both insufficient and ineffective in ensuring their children's survival. Parental care could span across a wide range of practices and attitudes and vary greatly in intensity and quality, reflecting among other things actual costs and future benefits related to child rearing. For instance, such forms of care could include giving babies opiates to make them stop crying (Federigo 1832; Musatti 1876). It is difficult to say, though, whether sue h practices were a mere consequence of ignorance, or if they actually reflected a lack of concern, even by contemporary standards, a partial withdrawal of maternal investment. While stressing the importance of childcare in differentiating mortality outcomes, I certainly do not pretend to submit Venetian mothers to any kind of "sacrifice test." On the contrary, I suggest that our efforts should be directed to acquiring a much deeper historical awareness of the cultural context in which so many "avoidable" deaths occurred. Unfortunately, we have largely neglected this "dark" side of the popular culture, and it is not possible to undertake such an inquiry here. However, it is worth stressing the extent to which the idea of death dominated the popular culture of that time. Death had an overwhelming role, and infant death, especially neonatal death, was of primary importance. For instance, there were proverbs to the effect that if a woman fell during pregnancy, her child would die; if childbirth was to take piace on Friday, her child would die; if the child were to have a small sign (e.g., a jewel) on his or her head, the child would die; if his or her ears were small, the child would die; if a window were left open near where a newborn was lying, a witch would come and kill the child; and so on (Bernoni 1874). Perhaps such beliefs had a consolatory function to offer some kind of explanation and make the heavy death toll more bearable. But it is also possible that such convictions actually encouraged parents to neglect their children. The Catholics believed death to be a liberation from suffering and a promise of eternai beatitude and reward, especially for infants and the poor. For Catholic mothers, death was certainly a reason for them to think of their dead children as "angel babies," as do the mothers of Alto do Cruzeiro, who also consider the death of their children as a sacrifice, in some religious terms, made for the sake of the surviving mother and siblings (Scheper-Hughes 1997, 210-12). The Jewish culture certainly does not embrace such concepts. Summer 2003, Volume 36, Number 3 Jews consider health and the preservation of life to be their primary duty, coming before any other religious precepts. Such values and ideas about the primacy of life and health have now become part of our uni versaI culture. It would be interesting to analyze the kind of cultural changes, along with those in social and institutional settings, that have accompanied the decline of infant mortality since the end of the nineteenth century. Whereas diffusionist interpretations of the fertility transition have raised increasing criticism (Kreager 1998; Friedlander, Okur, and SegaI 1999), a similar viewpoint has rarely been advanced to explain the parallel dec1ine in infant mortality, especially in countries where such a process took pIace later.18 If the interpretation of this essay is correct, it might well be that it also retlects the wider progress in social and economic conditions, the dissemination of the practices and attitudes once peculiar to this social or religious minority, a process in which Jewish doctors often played a leading role. All considered, it would have been relatively easy to avoid the waste of so many lives. "Occhio ai bambini!" (Watch out for the children!): so Cesare Musatti (1876), a famous Jewish physician and the first pediatrician in Venice, titled a book of simple recommendations and instructions for mothers. These included washing the babies frequently and never using cold water; keeping them in warm rooms; avoiding exposure to harsh weather, especially for baptism; never giving them opiates; never wrapping them tightly in swaddling clothes; breastfeeding them for at least six months; and always consulting the doctor whenever necessary. Watch out for the children! The very title would sound like a warning not to be taken too seriously if it were not for the fact that approximately one-third of the children born each year-to mothers who were potential readers of the bookdied during their first year of life. NOTES This research is part of the project on "Componenti genetiche, condizioni nelle prime fasi di vita e fattori socio-economici: un'analisi della longevità in Italia" supported by a grant of the Ministero dell'Istruzione, Università e Ricerca (COFIN 2001). Earlier versions of this article were given at the Nineteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, OsIo (August 2000) and at the Quatorzièmes entretiens du Centre Jacques Cartier, Col10que "La démographie des minorités-Regard croisés'," Lyon (December 2001). I would 1ike to express my appreciation to the participants in these meetings. I am al so grateful to George Alter, Marco Breschi, J. Morgan Kousser, Frans van Poppel, David Reher, and especially to James Lee for their warm encouragement and he1pful suggestions. l. In the 21 years between the originaI publication date and 1887, there were 13 editions. The most recent is a paperback edition published by Northwestern University Press in 2001. 2. Recent research (see Calabi 1991) has confirmed the awfu1 conditions of the Ghetto at that time. 3. The Austrian regime reintroduced parti al discrimination against Jews after 1816, but it did not affect residentia1 freedom (Berengo 1987). 4. Data for the life tab1e of the Jews are drawn from the popu1ation registers of 1850-69. The life table of the city is based on official statistics, availab1e since 1874 (Municipio di Venezia 1881). 5. These results are large1y consistent with those found by Sergio Della Pergola (1970) in other ltalian Jewish communities in the nineteenth century. 127 6. Several studies have cast doubts on the impact of public health expenditures, especially of investment in water supplies, in reducing infant mortality rates in nineteenth-century cities. See, for instance, George Alter (1997, 102-3) and Frances Beli and Robert Millward (1998). 7. See, for instance, the entry for "Baptéme" in Dictionnaire (1812 [I]: 1-3). 8. Social status is considered here as a household rather than an individuaI feature and refers to the occupation of the household head. Because there is no information on the dates of changes of occupation, and hardly any such change is recorded in the population register, soci a! status is treated here as a time-invariant covariate. Households are distributed into four groups: (1) day laborers, who included all persons whose earnings were uncertain and might change dai1y, according to job opportunities, such as fishermen, boatmen, porters, pedd1ers, and those simply defined as industrianti (unskilled laborers); (2) wage earners, who relied upon more regular income or salary-they included workers employed in hemp, leather, and tobacco factories; (3) a crowd of artisans and shopkeepers of various kinds, then particular1y numerous; and (4) the middle c1ass, comprising c1erks, directors, teachers, officers, and a few peop1e involved in commerce and banking. 9. The seasons are the following: winter (Dec.-Feb.), spring (Mar.May), summer (June-Aug.) and fall (Sept.-Nov.). 10.It is perhaps worth stressing that in ali mode1s concerning neonatal mortality, miscarriages and stillbirths are exc1uded, although for Catholics some cases of stillbirths could have been recorded as live births, as mentioned above. lt seems, however, that differences in the reporting of deaths can only account for a small part of the neonata! mortality differentials. 11. Indeed, these are just two different ways of considering the same basic question, that is, the existence of interactions between religion and other covariates. For the sake of clarity, I prefer to deve10p both points of view. Interactions have been tested without resu1ts and are therefore omitted from the following analysis. The only exception regards, as we shall see, the effect of season in the 30-180 days age group. 12. More precisely, I refer here to the current season, not to the season of birth. As far as the first month is concerned, however, season of birth and current season are largely overlapping. 13. For a more thorough discussion, see Breschi, Derosas, and Manfredini (2000). 14. Note that the reference value refers, respectively, to Jewish and Catholic day laborers and is omitted. 15. Frans van Poppel, Jona Schellekens, and Aart Liefbroer (2002) advanced two explanations for the advantage of Jewish infants and children in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century The Hague, which are generaI enough without falling into tauto10gy. As far as infant mortality is concerned, they resort to the time-honored argument of prolonged breastfeeding, which unfortunately fails to explain the Jewish advantage in neonatal and postneonatal mortality (roughly the first semester of life), which c1ustered the largest share of overall infant deaths, and when presumably ali chi1dren were breastfed. Prolonged breastfeeding does not explain 10wer mortality after weaning, either. As far as the latter is concerned, the authors use simulation models to argue that physical iso1ation preserved Jewish children, as well as other religious minorities, from exposure to infectious diseases: this is a kind of restatement of the argument of genetic selection through isolation, quite popular among earlytwentieth-century scholars (see above for references and criticism). Unfortunately, the iso1ation argument should a1so invo1ve different mortality patterns and distribution in the causes of death, which is not the case, at least for Venice. Furthermore, van Poppel and his colleagues did not provide any empirical evidence of the physical iso1ation of Jewish communities as late as the end of the nineteenth century. As mentioned above, more than two-thirds of the Venetian Jews were scattered throughout the city, whereas those who still dwelt in the Ghetto certainly did not spend most of their daily life there, as they notoriously did not centuries earlier, when nightly sec1usion was strictly enforced. 16. For criticism about the way demographers refer to culture, see Eugene Hamme1 (1990) and severa1 essays in Susan Greenhalgh (1995a); David Kertzer and Tom Fricke (1997); Alaka Basu and Peter Aaby (1998); see also Ron Lesthaeghe's (1989, 3-4) remarks. 17. By stressing the interplay of culture and socia1 and institutional setting, Lynch's interpretation fits c10sely the approach proposed by anthropologists such as Susan Greenhalgh (l995b), Anthony Carter (1995), and others. 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La Comunità israelitica di Trieste (Studio di demografia storica). Metron 3: 521-55. Un~&dStaI... Postal SefViee Statement of Ownership, Management, IJ_p~t and Circulation .... nle HISTORICAL 14,~""Dat8t",CI""""t""'OataB<llow Sprin~ 2003 MEHIODS 3.filir>gDalfl ~~~~~~~1·2~~I~:U' I ~~i.t~:~'':.~~I;~~gO.I. Ckl0~rl.2003 4.IU""Fr""lul/Oey 6,Annual$vbscriplionPri<;e lnSliMion,Sl20 Indiv;dua1sSSS Quarterly 1319 E,ghleenth S1ree! NW, Washingmn 13J9E'gh,Ct:nlhStreel NW,Washingl0n Co!1!3C1Pers"" FredHut>er Tel&phoni 202·2%·6267 DC 20036-1802 DC 20036-1802 C·TOIaIPaldandforAeq""SledCio::ulal .... (Sumo/l5b,(I).(2),(J).ar>d(4)} d,~,:ribulion Il) OuIsde-COUIIlya.SlatedonFOIm3541 (2) In-County.. Sialed on Form byMaiI Hel.nDwighl Re;d Educational Foundalion 1319 Eighlcenth Slre<:l NW, Washinglon DC 20036-1802 (&mpIes, 3541 ~,~--~~~--~ ~r;.::r;::..,) Othe'Classe.M"'IOOTlI«>ughtheUSPS (3) ·,Fr .... OòstribulionCJ.Jt.klelheMai J.MorganKousser California In,lilulC ofTechnology. 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