[Report 1936] / Medical Officer of Health, Cambridgeshire County Council.

  • Cambridgeshire (England). County Council
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1936] / Medical Officer of Health, Cambridgeshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/86 (page 8)
    1935, it does indicate that the bulk of the discrepancy between tlie rates in the Borough and Rural Districts is due to the age and sex distribution of the populations, rather than to any difference in the living conditions in the two areas. In order that the trend of the birth rates and death rates over a period of years may be better appreciated (a much more important matter than the mere comparison of individual years) an attempt has been made to portray them in gra])hic form and the result is appended with this report. Birth rates are shown in black and death rates in red, continuous lines representing the rates for the Administrative County, broken lines those for the Borough and dotted lines those for the Rural Districts. It will be seen that the rates for the rural area are almost invariably above those for the Borough in the case of both births and deaths, the rate for the County being, of course, an average of the two. The birth rate shows an almost continuous decline in each case since 1920, while the death rate has remained at a more constant level with periodical fluctuations. Perhaps the most striking and most important feature is the tendency of the curves for birth rate and death rate to approach each other and even at times to intersect in recent years. The effect of the War years on both curves is well seen, together with the effect of the influenza epidemic of 1918 on the death rate and that of the return of discharged soldiers to civil life on the birth rate immediately after the War. The marked fall in the death rate after the influenza epidemic is also apparent and is presumably due to the removal of a large number of weakly individuals by that outbreak.