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The joint effect of maternal malnutrition and cold weather on neonatal mortality in nineteenth-century Venice: An assessment of the hypothermia hypothesis

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 63; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00324720903165449

1477-4747

Renzo Derosas,

Birth, Development, and Health

Abstract 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. Keywords: hypothermiamaternal malnutritionneonatal mortalitycoldnorthern Italylow birth weight Notes 1. Renzo Derosas is at the Dipartimento di Studi Storici, Università Ca' Foscari, Dorsoduro 3848, 30123 Venezia, Italy. E-mail: derosas@unive.it 2. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the 2008 European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon, 27 February–1 March 2008, and at a workshop on 'Fetal and Neonatal Mortality: Historical Perspectives on the Borderline between Life and Death', organized by the Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography, Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences, Spanish Council for Scientific Research, Madrid, 10–11 June 2008. I am grateful to the participants for their remarks and suggestions. I would also like to thank Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna and Alessandro Rosina for their generosity in letting me use their unpublished work on neonatal mortality in the Veneto. This work would not have been possible without the invaluable help of Michela Tombel, who assisted me in the collection and control of the data used for this paper.