This is a project of dr. F.W.A. van Poppel (NIDI, The Hague) and dr. J. Schellekens (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) and is partly financed by the Wellcome Trust.

This project focuses primarily on the detection of the causes for the relatively low numbers of deaths for Jewish children in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the relatively high death numbers for Catholic children in that period. The research will answer the question whether socio-economic and demographic characteristics (age of mother at time of birth, rank number of birth, social class, income etc.) can explain the differences in the numbers of deaths.

A data file containing about 3600 families from The Hague will be created for the period 1860 to 1920. Marriage certificates, population registers and death certificates will be used as sources. A part of the HSN basic sample will be part of this database. All data will enter the database using HSN software. The first results were presented at the 25th Social Science History Conference at Pittsburgh, in October 2000 and the Quatorzièmes Entretiens du Centre Jacques Cartier in Lyon (2001). In 2002, the first article was published: 'Religious differences in infant and child mortality in Holland' in Population Studies 56 (2002) and 2003 the second article 'Religion and social mobility in nineteenth century The Hague' was published in Sociology of religion 64 (2003). In addition, results were presented by Van Poppel and Schellekens at the 28th Social Science History Conference in Baltimore (2003).

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