Moral statistics most narrowly refers to numerical data generally considered to be indicative of social pathology in groups of people. Examples include statistics on

crimes In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...

(against persons and property), illiteracy,

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

, illegitimacy, abortion, divorce, prostitution, and the economic situation sometimes called

pauperism Pauperism (; ) is the condition of being a "pauper", i.e. receiving relief administered under the Irish poor laws, Irish and English Poor Laws. From this, pauperism can also be more generally the state of being supported at public expense, withi ...

in the 19th century. The gathering of anything that might be called social statistics is often dated from

John Graunt John Graunt (24 April 1620 – 18 April 1674) has been regarded as the founder of demography. Graunt was one of the first demographers, and perhaps the first epidemiologist, though by profession he was a haberdasher. He was bankrupted later in ...

’s (1662) analysis of the London ''Bills of Mortality'', which tabulated birth and death data collected by London parishes. The beginnings of the systematic collection of population statistics (now called

demography Demography () is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration. Demographic analysis examine ...

) occurred in the mid-18th century, often attributed to

Johann Peter Süssmilch Johann Peter Süßmilch or Süssmilch (September 3, 1707 in Zehlendorf, Berlin, Zehlendorf – March 22, 1767 in Berlin) was a German Protestant pastor, statistician and demographer. He is most well-known for his work ''The Divine order in the ...

in 1741. Data on ''moral'' variables began to be collected and disseminated by various state agencies (most notably in France and Britain) in the early 19th century, and were widely used in debates about social reform. The first major work on this topic was the ''Essay on moral statistics of France'' by

André-Michel Guerry André-Michel Guerry (; December 24, 1802 – April 9, 1866) was a French lawyer and amateur statistician. Together with Adolphe Quetelet he may be regarded as the founder of moral statistics which led to the development of criminology, soci ...

in 1833. In this book, Guerry presented

thematic map A thematic map is a type of map that portrays the geographic pattern of a particular subject matter (theme) in a geographic area. This usually involves the use of map symbols to Geovisualization, visualize selected properties of geographic fe ...

s of the departments of France, shaded according to illiteracy, crimes against persons and against property, illegitimacy, donations to the poor and so forth, and used these to ask questions about how such moral variables were related. In Britain this theme was taken up beginning in 1847 by

Joseph Fletcher Joseph Francis Fletcher (April 10, 1905 – October 28, 1991) was an American professor who founded the theory of situational ethics in the 1960s. A pioneer in the field of bioethics. Fletcher was a leading academic proponent of the potential b ...

who published several articles on the topic ''Moral and educational statistics of England and Wales.''Fletcher, J. (1849). Moral and educational statistics of England and Wales. ''Journal of the Statistical Society of London'', 12, 151–176, 189–335.

References

Further reading