This project will analyze data from manuscript records of a roll listing African-American immigrants to Liberia between 1820 and 1843; manuscript records of the 1843 Census of the Liberian Immigrant Population; and manuscript records of several censuses of the Cape Palmas immigrant Population. No systematic demographic study of the mortality experience of this population has been undertaken and these data allow a number of issues in mortality analysis to be investigated in a well-documented setting of extraordinarily high mortality. Proposed work will 1) provide a public use tape that contains data on the African-Americans who settled in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, and on 2400 of these settlers and their descendants who were living in Liberia in 1843, 2) describe the mortality conditions of the Liberian population between 1820 and 1843 and compare them to other migrant and non-migrant populations at the time, 3) use the Liberian mortality experience to extend model life table systems to very high mortality levels, 4) test specific hypotheses about factors believed to be affecting both the mortality rates and health status of African-Americans in Liberia.
| McDaniel, A (1992) Extreme mortality in nineteenth-century Africa: the case of Liberian immigrants. Demography 29:581-94 |
