Abstract
Objective and methodsWe analyze the influence of population movement on susceptibility to death and resilience during two epidemics occurring in Dijon soon after the Black Death. Using a specific program designed to propose links between entries in annual tax registers, we define tentative heads of household, the elapsed time since their first registration and their ties with other persons within the city.ResultsDuring the 1400 epidemic heads of household who were registered for 1–3 years die in large numbers, whereas during years without epidemics, their death rate is lower than that of heads of household who were registered longer. Recent registration is an epidemic vulnerability factor only in association with a low taxation status, which, when isolated, does not influence mortality. A lack of familial ties within Dijon is another vulnerability factor among the recently registered. This suggests that poor, recent emigrants are more affected by epidemic mortality. In contrast, the mortality of recently registered heads of household is indistinct during a later epidemic occurring after several years of major famine that may have selected the more resistant emigrants and/or excluded the more miserable of them from our analysis. In contrast to the first one, this second epidemic is followed by rapid demographic recovery. This latter recovery is fully explained by the contribution of poor, newly registered heads of household without ties in Dijon.ConclusionOur results outline the interaction between population movement and low socioeconomic status on death susceptibility in historical plagues and show that poor recent emigrants may also be key players in the resilience of the population after an epidemic.
Highlights
Plague, recognized as a present-day re-emerging health threat [1], is one of the most extensively studied communicable diseases of the past
During the 1400 epidemic heads of household who were registered for 1–3 years die in large numbers, whereas during years without epidemics, their death rate is lower than that of heads of household who were registered longer
A lack of familial ties within Dijon is another vulnerability factor among the recently registered. This suggests that poor, recent emigrants are more affected by epidemic mortality
Summary
Plague, recognized as a present-day re-emerging health threat [1], is one of the most extensively studied communicable diseases of the past. The influences of frailty, age, gender, and socioeconomic status on plague-related mortality were recently reevaluated by paleodemographic methods [15,16,17,18] and by the direct and extensive analysis of historical sources [19, 20] combined with the calculation of fatality rates [21] or of individual’s risk of death [22]. This has contributed to a better knowledge of the disease despite a number of conflicting results. These discrepancies are possibly attributable to the heterogeneity of the epidemics under study and/or to the non-exhaustive nature of the documentation with respect to a number of critical and possibly interactive frailty factors
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