Abstract
Nowadays, much attention in the Netherlands is devoted to the increasing gap between rich and poor that causes health inequalities. People with a low level of education, a low income or a lower-class occupation tend to die at a younger age and generally from different causes than those who completed a higher level of education. This socio-economic inequality in health seems to be characteristic of the modern pattern of disease. In this modern pattern of disease, degenerative disease is also the dominant cause of death. According to the theory of epidemiological transition, the dominant cause of death in the Netherlands shifted from infectious disease to degenerative disease from 1870-1880 onwards.
This study attempted to examine the epidemiological transition and emergence of the modern pattern of disease for the Netherlands by using a case study that was based on the population of Amsterdam aged twenty years and older. This study used a unique source: the Amsterdam Cause of Death Register. The Bureau of Statistics not only recorded the cause of death of all Amsterdam residents who died between 1854 and 1926, but also documented other socio-economic data, such as gender and last known residential address. These data have provided us with the opportunity to improve the analysis of the epidemiological transition and the emergence of the modern pattern of disease.
