Cultural Demography: New England Deaths and the Puritan Perception of Risk

Abstract

This study examines the perception of the risk of death among New Englanders in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America and compares it with the actual risk of death using the life table concepts developed by demographers. Emphasis is on the relationship between actual and perceived risks of death. The authors conclude that although the actual risk of death changed radically over time as the mortality transition evolved the perceptions of Puritan ministers and others of the individual mortality risk did not. The demographic implication of this failure to understand the significance of this change in mortality is discussed and some modern parallels concerning the gap between perceived and actual risk of death are noted.