Cemetery Demography

Introduction

Local cemeteries are a good source of data to examine some demographic concepts as applied to human populations. In this exercise we are interested in comparing rates of survival of amongst groups born in different decades. One might expect that people born in the 1800s would have much higher infant mortalities and perhaps earlier deaths than those born at the turn of the century. We will test this hypothesis by plotting the surviorship curves of individuals born in different decades

Methods and Materials

You will be assigned a local cemetery to visit. Please be respectful when you visit the cemetery to collect the data for this exercise.

When you visit the cemetery record the following data from each tombstone:

1. Family Name (Last Name, First Name)
2. Date of birth (Year and Month)
3. Date of death (Year and Month)
4. Sex

Collect as many records as possible. When you return to the lab, you will be entering this data in a spreadsheet. You will be sorting the data by decades. You should have records of at least 100 individuals born in the assigned decade, half male and half female. Based on decade assigned will be examining the following aspects:

1. What was the average life span amongst the people born in that decade?
2. Plot a histogram of age by ten year increments (use the diagram on page 189 in Krebs as your model).
3. Determine survivorship curve data. Use a ten year interval. Standardize to "per 1000" (percent surviving * 1000). Graph with Age on x-axis and Percent Survivors on y-axis?
4. Amongst your total sample was there preferential month for births? deaths?

Some thought questions:

1. Compare your results with other in your group that did a different decade. What differences to you see in the values you calculated above?
2. The data should be collected through birth cohorts. Why can we not do this for the decades of the 1940's and 1950's?
3. Speculate into the future if:
   1. medical advances continue and most diseases are eliminated, especially infant mortality
   2. environmental problems get worse and pollution related diseases increase