150 Years of temperature-related excess mortality in the Netherlands

Even in present-day high-income countries, there is a lot of evidence of a high degree of vulnerability of the population to both high and low outdoor temperatures. The magnitude of temperature-related mortality is strongly related to a wide variety of social, economic, and behavioural factors. To gain insight into the changing impact of cold and heat on mortality, we analyze Dutch individual death records in relation to daily temperature for the period 1855-2006 for one of the 11 Dutch provinces. Making use of negative binomial regression analysis, we study whether the effect of temperature varied by age, sex, and social class, and analyze the changes in the vulnerability to temperature fluctuations. 1 Peter Ekamper is at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague, The Netherlands. E-Mail: [email protected]. 2 Frans van Poppel is at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague, The Netherlands. E-Mail: [email protected]. 3 Coen van Duin is at the Department of Population Statistics, Statistics Netherlands, (CBS) in The Hague, The Netherlands. E-Mail: [email protected]. 4 Joop Garssen is at the Department of Population Statistics, Statistics Netherlands, (CBS) in The Hague, The Netherlands. E-Mail: [email protected]. Ekamper et al.: 150 Years of temperature-related excess mortality in the Netherlands 386 http://www.demographic-research.org