The longevity of famous people from Hammurabi to Einstein

David de la Croix and Omar Licandro ()

No 2012052, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: We built a unique dataset of 300,000 famous people born between Hammurabi's epoch and 1879, Einstein's birth year. It includes, among other variables, the vital dates, occupations, and locations of celebrities from the Index Bio-bibliographicus Notorum Hominum (IBN), a very comprehensive biographical tool. Our main contribution is fourfold. First, we show, using for the first time a worldwide, long-running, consistent database, that there was no trend in mortality rates during the Malthusian era. Second, after correcting for selection and composition biases, we date the beginning of the steady improvements in longevity to the cohort born in 1640-9, clearly preceding the Industrial Revolution. Third, we find that this timing of improvements in longevity concerns most countries in Europe, as well as all types of skilled occupations. Finally, the reasons for this early increase in mean lifetime are related to age-dependent shifts in the survival law.

Keywords: longevity; notoriety; Malthus; Gompertz-Makeham; compensation effect of mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I20 J11 J24 N30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-12-21
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2012.html (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The longevity of famous people from Hammurabi to Einstein (2015)
Working Paper: The Longevity of Famous People from Hammurabi to Einstein (2015)
Working Paper: The longevity of famous people from Hammurabito Einstein (2015)
Working Paper: The Longevity of Famous People from Hammurabi to Einstein (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2012052

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain GILLIS ().