Comment: Although registration of births was compulsory in England and Wales as early as 1837, the number of births (and maybe deaths) was substantially undercounted until
at least the mid-1870s, so that is
where this graph starts. The steep, prolonged and ongoing decline in the infant mortality rate began, it appears, in 1900.
Abbreviations: WW1 = First World War; WW2 = Second World War; Depress. = Great Depression.
Method: Mortality rates were downloaded from the Human Mortality Database (see www.mortality.org or
www.humanmortality.de)
on 4 December 2009. The plotted lines connect unsmoothed values.
Comment: Although registration of births was compulsory in England and Wales as early as 1837, the number of births (and maybe deaths) was substantially undercounted until at least the mid-1870s, so that is where this graph starts. The steep, prolonged and ongoing decline in the infant mortality rate began, it appears, in 1900.
Abbreviations: WW1 = First World War; WW2 = Second World War; Depress. = Great Depression.
Method: Mortality rates were downloaded from the Human Mortality Database (see www.mortality.org or www.humanmortality.de) on 4 December 2009. The plotted lines connect unsmoothed values.