The joint effect of maternal malnutrition and cold weather on neonatal mortality in nineteenth-century Venice: an assessment of the hypothermia hypothesis.
Recent studies stress the key role played by neonatal mortality in the demographic regime of north-eastern Italy. In particular, during the period 1700-1830 this area experienced a dramatic upsurge in winter neonatal deaths, pushing overall neonatal and infant mortality rates to the highest in Italy and most of Europe. Scholars have argued that this trend was caused by a general pauperization leading to widespread maternal malnutrition, low birth weight, and an increased frequency of winter neonatal deaths caused by the higher sensitivity of low-birth-weight infants to the cold. The study presented here tested this hypothesis using a large mid-nineteenth-century longitudinal sample of the Venetian population. Two alternative measures of maternal malnutrition were applied: chronic undernourishment and temporary nutritional stress during late gestation. Only the second condition is significantly associated with higher neonatal mortality when outside temperatures were low. This is consistent with mechanisms of neonatal thermoregulation but casts doubt on the pauperization hypothesis suggested by other studies.
Dipartimento di Studi Storici, Universitá Ca' Foscari, Dorsoduro 3848, 30123 Venezia, Italy. derosas@unive.it
Renzo
R
Derosas
D003080:Cold Temperature / Q000009:adverse effects*; D005260:Female; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D007035:Hypothermia / Q000401:mortality*; D007226:Infant Mortality / Q000266:history* / Q000639:trends; D007230:Infant, Low Birth Weight; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000150:complications*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009035:Mothers; D014887:Weather