HYBRID EVENT

Excess mortality in early 20th century Africa: the Spanish influenza, conflicts and draughts

Guest: Robert Stelter (Université catholique de Louvain/Rostock)
Department of Digital and Computational Demography, April 24, 2024

Hybrid Seminar Talk, April 24th from 11am to 12pm (CET)

Robert Stelter (Université catholique de Louvain/Rostock) will talk about excess mortality in early 20th century Africa: the Spanish influenza, conflicts and draughts.

Abstract

A large literature has identified the Spanish influenza pandemic as the most important health shock in twentieth-century Africa, with an estimated death toll of up to 2-5 million or 2% of the entire population. We use novel genealogical data to show that the influenza pandemic did not affect Africa nearly as universally as the literature suggests, and that excess mortality in many countries - particularly those in central and northern Africa - was rather small. Our estimates indicate that the overall mortality impact of the pandemic is overestimated by 100% in the existing literature. We also show that the mortality impact of major national and international conflicts in the early twentieth century exceeded the impact of the Spanish influenza in most countries.

About

Robert Stelter (Dr. rer. pol., Université catholique de Louvain/Rostock) is the Max Geldner Assistant Professor for Quantitative Economic History at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in the Laboratory Fertility and Well-being. He uses a theory-based empirical approach to study the long-run interplay between the demographic and economic development. Personal website: Robert Stelter (google.com).

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