Sex-Specific Child Mortality During the Swedish Mortality Decline: Why is Socio-Economic Status Important for Girls Only, and Food Prices for Boys Only?

Kent Johansson, Lund University

Several historical studies have shown only small mortality differences, in both directions, between the sexes for Sweden during the mortality transition. In Johansson (2004), child mortality in southern Sweden was studied for thousands of individuals. The study did control for sex, but separate survival regressions for boys and girls reveal very different effects: boys respond to changes in food prices and girls don’t, while family socio-economic status affect the girls but not the boys. This could be either an effect of how food supply affects the sexes differently biologically or that boys and girls were treated differently within the family.