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The rate for the country as a whole was 12.5. The lower local rate
would seem to point to the district's being more healthy than the country
as a whole. But because the old are more likely to die than the young
and because women survive longer than men, death rates are affected
by the age and sex constitution of the population. The effect of these
changes can be discounted by allowing for the extent to which the composition
of the local population differs from that of the country as a whole.
To indicate this, the Registrar-General prepares a comparative mortality
index which when used to multiply the death rate gives a figure which
would be the death rate for the district were the population of the same
age and sex constitution as that of the country. The figure for this
district is 1.16. Applied to the local death rate gives an adjusted death
rate of 11.0. This again is below the national rate and indicates that the
conditions of this district do, in fact, make for longer living of the population,
and that therefore the district is healthier than the average of the
country.
Of the 2,094 deaths, 1,022 were males and 1,072 were of females.
58 per cent, of the males who died had attained the age of 65 and
70 of the females. These are much the same figures as last year, namely,
55 per cent, for males and 70 per cent, for females.
Infant Mortality.
The infant mortality rate is one of the vital statistics of special
interest because it has for long been accepted as an index of the healthiness
of the community, being influenced by so many of the factors which
affect the health of the population. The dramatic fall in the rate in
the present century was mostly in the deaths which previously occurred
in infants who had survived one month. The greater the fall in these
deaths, the greater the proportion the deaths are now due to factors
associated with the pregnancy of the mother or with factors related to
the confinement. To that extent, then, once the rate has fallen to low
figures (although it cannot do this if environmental factors are bad) it
can no longer act in the same way as an indicator of these conditions.
The greater the proportion the neo-natal deaths (that is, those among
infants who have not reached the age of one month) bear to the rest, the
more the rate points to the importance of factors relating to pregnancy
or labour than to environmental conditions.
Last year 62 infants died under one year of age. In the same year
2,895 infants were born. The infant mortality rate, therefore, was 22.1.
In 1950, only 39 infants in this district died before reaching the
age of one year, the infant mortality rate being the exceedingly low one of
13.6. Up to this, the previously lowest rate for the district was 20.7 in
1949, which itself was a marked fall on the previous record of 24.0 in
1947.
That this last year's figure was not as low as that for the previous
year is not a matter for surprise as the rate for 1950 was quite unexpected
in that it was so much lower than anything which had been previously
experienced locally. Sharp rises can be expected when conditions are
exceptionally adverse. For instance, an especially hard winter might
lead to many deaths, just as an outbreak of an infection such as influenza