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then the death rate will be lower than it would have been had the
population been of normal age and sex distribution. In order to
allow for variations in such age and sex distribution and so enable
death rates to be more accurate indicators of the healthiness or
otherwise of a district, the Registrar.General now issues a figure known
as the comparative mortality index, which, applied to the local death
rate, allows for these variations. The population of this district is of a
different age group distribution than that of the country as a whole,
because it would be the younger adults who came out to this area to live
in the many new houses, which were put up before the war. The index
for this district is 1.17. The adjusted death rate then is 10.4, a figure
below the national rate of 11.6.
Of the 1,999 deaths 982 were of males and 1,017 of females. The
corresponding figures for 1949 were 1,890, 928 and 962. Of the 982 males
who died 547 were over the age of 65; of the 1,017 females, 719; that is
to say, 55 per cent. of the males who died had attained the age of 65 and
70 per cent. of the females. Most of the extra deaths which occurred in
1950 as compared with 1949, were amongst those of ages over 65.
The nation is at last waking up to the importance of the effect of the
falling birthrate and of the age distribution of the population, because
this is now giving rise to the problem of the aged. It seems to be assumed
that the larger number of the aged now living and the still larger numbers
there are to be in the future, are the result of people living longer now; and
the assumption is that this is because of the improved living conditions
brought about partly by the activities of the Public Health Service. But
the true position is not that people are living so very much longer, as that
so many more are living to these advanced ages. The main reason that
there are these many more living to these ages is that there were so very
many infants born in this country in the last decades of the last century.
For some years to come there will be this relative preponderance of the aged,
a preponderance which is to be more marked in the coming years because
for so many years of this century the number of births each year has been
so much lower than the number in each of the latter years of the last
century. A rise in the birth rate now will only add for some years to the
disproportion between the consumers and the producers and would result
in the needs of that many more dependants having to be met by the
relatively smaller working population. This problem of the aged which
is to face administrators for a number of years to come is, however, not
necessarily a permanent one. When the population, which is the result
of the large number of births in the latter part of the last century, has
died, the population will become stabilized at one of more normal age
distribution, but, of course, of smaller numbers, if the stability results
from a persistently low birth rate. The plans for the care of the aged
then for the more distant future should not be based on the assumption
that the disproportion of the aged in the population of the coming years
will be a permanent feature.
Infant Mortality.
The infant mortality rate is the death rate per 1,000 births of infants
under one year of age. It has been accepted as a delicate index not