The Volokh Conspiracy

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Volokh Conspiracy

Leading Causes of Death in 1900 U.S.

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


Infectious diseases, specifically pneumonia, influenza, and tuberculosis, amounting to a death rate of about 400 per 100,000—with today's population, that would be about 1.3 million deaths a year. (The number might be somewhat lower to the extent some of the pneumonia was noninfectious in origin.) The number of pneumonia and influenza deaths in the U.S. last year was 55,000.

Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and a Visiting Fellow (Senior Fellow starting May 2024) at the Hoover Institution (Stanford). Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any educational institution.