Grounding

Group 4 — Mortality Scholars

Your Research Question

How many years of life were stolen by premature death — and what is the energy equivalent of those lost years?

You are measuring what was destroyed, not extracted.

Foreclosed energy is different from productive energy. It cannot be added to the productive total — it represents potential that was eliminated. An enslaved child who died at age 3 never produced labor, but they would have produced roughly 40 years × 365 days × 3–5 kWh/day had they lived a full life. That destroyed potential is what your group measures.

This is also the most emotionally heavy research task in the lab. Take care of each other as you work through it.

Your Fermi chain

Step 1

Research annual mortality rates by crop system and state

Richard Steckel, Michael Tadman, and the slave demography literature

Step 2

Research life expectancy gap: free white vs. enslaved

Average free white life expectancy minus enslaved life expectancy = years stolen per death

Step 3

Get kWh/person/day from Group 2 for each labor context

Pre-filled with Group 2's Lab 02 numbers — update when they finalize

Step 4

Special case: infant mortality (the largest category)

~350 deaths per 1,000 live births. Must be modeled separately with different kWh assumption.

Step 5

Compute: mortality_rate × years_stolen × 365 × kWh/day

= foreclosed kWh per person per year, for each context

Output

Hand your mortality table to Group 5

They compute: population (Group 1) × your rate = energy_kwh.foreclosed per state-year

What you need to research

Annual mortality rates by crop system: Steckel (1986) is the key quantitative source
Infant mortality rates: Steckel (1986) estimates ~350 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy for enslaved people vs. free white population — the "years stolen" denominator
Cause-of-death breakdown: overwork, violence, disease, childbirth complications
Regional variation: Louisiana sugar (highest mortality) vs. Border states (lower)

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