Did Africans Live Longer in the Antebellum United States?

This article argues that the accepted view of the mortality of enslaved Africans in the United States rests on fragile estimates; these estimates are not robust to flaws in the data....We examine the sensitivity of previous life table estimates for the African population of the United States to assumptions about the data. We combine modern demographic techniques and new model life tables--the Liberian model life tables--developed for the study of historical mortality....We focus our attention on two periods: 1850 to 1860 and 1860 to 1870. These periods cover the two major events that could have had an impact on the data namely the illegal slave trade and the American Civil War. (EXCERPT)