Mortality represents a prime object to study the social construction of statistical knowledge from a historical perspective. Death itself is a quite obvious phenomenon, yet, one could describe the mortality of a population by a multitude of indicators and rates based on the mortality of the overall or select populations for a given period divided, again, by overall or select population figures. The lack of standard measures became a source of controversy when statisticians noted that regional and international mortality comparisons varied depending on the indicator chosen. The mortality rate of Budapest – yearly overall mortality divided by the standing population – was, for example, lower than the corresponding figure in the Hungarian countryside. Yet, in terms of age specific mortality rates, all age groups in the capital had significantly higher mortality than the corresponding population in the countryside.
The present paper deals with the social construction of statistical knowl...