A statistical survey of infant mortality's urgent call for action / by Edward Bunnell Phelps.

  • Edward Bunnell Phelps
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A statistical survey of infant mortality's urgent call for action / by Edward Bunnell Phelps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Even were these records to be taken as absolutely worthy of credence, the apparent decrease in the three years ending with 1908 would indicate a decrease of less than two infant deaths per hundred living births in recent years as compared with the average for the quarter-century immediately preceding. But Average tor 31 LeadingForeign Countries average for conn..and mass.andNewYqrk for Twenty-five Years.I88H905.inc for six years.i904-i909 inc. 154 Deaths per iooo Births i39Deaths per 1.000 Births CHART I.—Infant mortality per 1,000 living birtlis. Each circle represents 1,000 births—black sections, percentages of deaths under one year. the figures in question can scarcely be taken at their full face value, although cited from the official vital statistics of the sev- eral countries, for the reason that in practically all countries there has been a larger percentage of improvement of late years in the registration of births than in that of infant deaths. And, as the infant death rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths under 1 by the number of registered births, the larger the registered percentage of births the larger will be the divisor and the smaller will be the quotient—or apparent infant mor- tality rate—even though the actual numbers of births and infant deaths be identical for the two periods under comparison. It is evident, therefore, that apparent declines in the annual infant death rates of the various countries. States and cities cannot be taken as conclusive, and should not so be taken unless care- fully investigated and supported by corroborative data. This defect in the commonly accepted statistics of infant mortality is especially prevalent in those for the registration States and cities of this country, as I shall later on endeavor to make clear in this paper. p.ij. For the time being, setting aside this element of probable error, and noting only the essential showing of the world-wide tabulation, it seems to be safe to assume that in the civilized world at large outside of the United States not less than 13 out
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