AMERICA’S FALLING DEATH RATE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1643, 28 November 1916, Page 4

AMERICA’S FALLING DEATH RATE.

Even those who say that statistics are dry and unattractive must be impressed by the official figures which show a marked and continuous reduction of the death rate in the United States. This rate last year, 13.5 per thousand, was the lowest ever known there. It is based upon reports from States and cities containing 07,000,000 persons, or a little more than twothirds of the entire population. The average rate was 10.2 during the period of five years that ended 1905, and it has been falling ever since. Gains in cities are most noticeable. In New York the reduction has been from an average of 19 in the five-year period mentioned above to 13.9 and in the State the rate has declined from 17.1 to 14.6. All this means the saving of many lives and the avoidance of much costly illness and disability. The chief cause of the improvement has been progress in sanitation, in the use of those precautions and safeguards which are required for the prevention of diseases, especially those of an infectious character. The United States has profited by the results of scientific inquiry as to the origin and transmission of such ailments. Large and generous expenditures, with concerted effort, have cut down in a few year’s by more than one-fifth the death rate for tuberculosis. Health officers have the support of the people. Pollution of water supplies at once excites public protest in these days, and there are few typhoid epidemics in comparison with the number twenty years ago. The press is always on guard. It will be admitted that its warnings and its constant dissemination of what may be called sanitary truths have been effective in promoting that death-rate which official reports now disclose.