Two statistical investigations of the health of college women have
been undertaken; one in America in 1882, which tabulated various data
connected with the health, occupation, marriage, birth rate, etc., of
705 graduates of the 12 American colleges belonging at that time to
the Association of collegiate alumnæ (Health statistics of women
college graduates; report of a special committee of the Association of
collegiate alumnæ, Annie G. Howes, chairman; together with statistical
tables collated by the Massachusetts bureau of statistics of labor.
Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 18 Post Office Square. 1885),
and one in England in 1887 (Health statistics of women students of
Cambridge and Oxford and of their sisters, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick,
Cambridge university press, 1890). The English statistics dealt with
566 women students (honor students who had taken tripos examinations
and final honors, and women who had been in residence three, two and
one year) of Newnham and Girton colleges, Cambridge, and of Lady
Margaret and Somerville halls at Oxford. It was found that in England
75 per cent of the honor students were at the time of the
investigation in excellent or good health. It was found that in
America 78 per cent of the graduates were at the time of the
investigation in good health and 5 per cent in fair health. In
estimating the result of this investigation it is difficult to find a
standard of comparison. There is no way of knowing what percentage of
good health is to be expected in the case of the average woman who has
not been to college. It is stated in the American health
investigation, page 10, that Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, while obtaining
data for her monograph on the question of rest for women, found that
of 246 women only 56+ per cent were in good health. The American
statistics were compared with the results obtained in an investigation
of the condition of 1,032 working women of Boston, made by the
Massachusetts bureau of statistics of labor; the comparison showed
that the health of college women was more satisfactory than the health
of working women. The English statistics were compared with the health
statistics of 450 sisters or first cousins who had not received a
college education, and it was found that, at all periods, about 5 per
cent less of honor graduates were in bad health than of sisters and
cousins. The comparative tables showed that the married graduates were
healthier than their married sisters, that there were fewer childless
marriages among them, that they had a larger proportion of children
per year of married life, and that their children were healthier.
Footnote 48:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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