The following table of death rates in the registration area of the United States, which, as before stated, embraces 21 States and one or more cities or towns in 16 others, is interest ing and shcrws the comparatively low mortality rate throughout a large portion of the cottntty.
.
The death rate of a conununity is the ratio of the deaths to the entire population, and the unit of time is one year, though death rates are stated and also computed for shorter periods. In many States the board of health publishes a weekly or monthly. bulletin of deaths in con nection with other vital statistics. In compar ing the death rates of different localities the rate per year 1,000 of population is the measure of comparison. The death rate may be found by dividing the actual number of deaths by the number of thousands in the population.
This is the crude death rate and in many places, especially.lare cities or places in which there are large mstitutionst such as hospitals, ahnsbouses and penitentianes, it is decidedly inaccurate.
Deductions must, therefore, be made for the deaths in such institutions, which are usually far more numerous than in the community at large. Additions must be made if any con siderable numbers of the population have gone to other places and died there.
Suppose, for example, that a large number of people with tuberculosis in an advanced stage were transported to another place, and died. within the period for which the death rate of the first place was talcen. It would manifestly be unfair to charge this mortality to the second place in preparing the death rate of the first.
'The death rate should also be analyzed and modified with reference to age, sex, race, occu pation, density of population and any unusual influence such as an epidemic, an earthquake, or any other abnormal experience.
The influence of age in such a computation is very considerable, when the deaths include a large number of infants, or a large cumber of very old persons. Infant mortality varies between 90 and 300 or more per thousand births. In the crowded tenement houses, in the homes of vice and intemperance, among.the children of diseased parents, and during the heat of summer the death rate among infants is always very high. In manufacturing towns
it is very high but it varies with the town.
Thus in Fall River, Mass., with its over crowded tenement houses, the rate is 239.7 per 1,000, while in Lynn, Mass., where the factory people have better pay, better .houses and more salubrious work, it is only 140.7 per 1,000, In Boston, with its intelligence and all its civic advantages it is 1882 per 1,000, and for the entire State of Massachusetts it is 160.4 per 1,000.
Causes for high infant mortality are pre mature birth, heredity, intemperance, early marriage, neglect, carelessness, ignorance, bad food, unsanitary surroundings, bad industrial conditions and infantile diseases.
The influence of sex upon the death rate is noticeable in those communities in which fe males predominate in the population, the aver age lite of females being greater than that of males, except between the ages of 10 and 20.
The influence of race is becoming more and more striking as the higher races acquire greater freedom from morbidity and greater longevity. The less favored races are still very sensitive to certain diseases, particularly in crowded cities, in unsanitary surroundings, and when bad habits are acquired. The mortality among negroes is very great, especially from such diseases as tuberculosis and the venereal diseases, though there has been very great im provement in this direction, especially during the last 15 years. Indians have a high mortality rate as they adopt the habits and customs and vices of civilized life, though education is also bringing improvement to them. The Chinese are far less inliuenced by unsanitary condi tions than either negroes or Indians.
The influence of occupation upon disease and mortality is just beginning to be adequately realized. There are many occupations which will produce disease and shorten life, no matter what safeguards may be thrown around them; there are others which are and always will be hazardous to life and limb, there are yet others winch can be made relatively safe when there is greater interest in the welfare and happi ness. of human beings than there is in ex ploiting them as a means of tnalang money.