[Report 1941-1944] / Medical Officer of Health, Montgomeryshire County Council.

  • Montgomeryshire (Wales). County Council.
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1941-1944] / Medical Officer of Health, Montgomeryshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/58 (page 8)
    The most notable features of the vital statistics since 1940 have been the reversal of the falling birth-rate and the rising death rate. In 1940, the birth rate was the lowest ever re- corded in the County, while the death rate was higher than for any year since 1922, and for the first year on record the number of deaths was markedly in excess of the number of births. In 1944, the County birth rate was higher than for any previous year since 1926 and the death rate in 1943 was the lowest since 1938. The age constitution of the population of a County has an important bearing on these rates, because a population with a high proportion of persons* in the older age-groups will naturally tend to have a high death rate, while a population with a high proportion of persons of re- productive age will tend to have a high birth rate. The number of illegitimate children born in the County in recent years has been relatively constant. The number of illegitimate children born in England and Wales has in- creased markedly each year since 1940. There is no evidence that this increase is due to any increase in the number of extra^^^^fconceptions, as the increase in 1941 was counter- balanced by a decrease in the births whose legitimacy would have been secured by marriage between the conception and the birth, and it appears likely that this accounts also for the continued increase of illegitimate births in 1942, 1943 and 1944. So far as the health of the community can be assessed from death rates, and with the limited statistics available, it can be said that, apart from the effects of the influenza epi- demic in the last quarter of 1943, the population of the Coun- ty has improved in health during the last four years. The infantile mortality rate was not unsatisfactory during the whole period and reached a new low record for the Coun- ty in 1943. This, with the small number of deaths in infants from diarrhoea, indicates that child welfare has not deteriorated since the outbreak of War,