The Longevity of Famous People from Hammurabi to Einstein

Omar Licandro () and David de la Croix

No 46, 2013 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

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.

Date: 2013
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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 (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed013:46

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