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Research project Climate conditions affect heat and respiratory diseases, especially in the elderly and the sick. Today cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death in Sweden.
The aim of this project is to examine how variations of climate affected people’s survival in Skellefteå, a rural town in Northern Sweden, before, during and after industrialisation. We will investigate how the role of seasonality and climate fluctuations for population health changed over time, and how individual factors such as age, sex and living conditions had an influence on this relationship. We will use population data of the Demographic Database at Umeå University that are based on historical parish registers between 1749 and 1950, as well as national population registers after 1950. Long-term measurements of temperature and precipitation will be used to analyse statistically the relationship between climate and mortality.
The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, 2013: SEK 1,491,000