'…a universal outpouring of savagery, imbecility and race hatred… Civilization was about to murder itself.'
—Bruce Duffy on the First World War, in The World as I Found It (1987)
All-cause mortality at age 15-34 years in
Belgium: 1841-2006
Comment: For both sexes, the peak mortality rates at this age were in 1849, 1866 and 1871; in the first and last of these, the rates were higher in young women than young men. No mortality data are available for the 1914-18 period of German occupation.
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: For both sexes, the peak mortality rates at this age were in 1849, 1866 and 1871; in the first and last of these, the rates were higher in young women than young men. No mortality data are available for the 1914-18 period of German occupation.
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.