MISLEADING STATISTICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 138, 14 June 1938, Page 6

MISLEADING STATISTICS.

A fact of which few of the general public are aware was mentioned at a meeting of the plunket Society "in "Wairoa. When New Zealanders speak with pride of the Dominion's low. rate of infant mortality—"the lowest in.' - the world"—they are (though usually unconsciously) misrepresenting the position. In the Year Book they will, it is true, find many pages of statistics, and they will learn, for instance, that the infant mortality rate for the first } r ear of life was, in the years 1926-35, only 34 per 1000. But Maori deaths are not included in this average. The corresponding rate for Maoris was, in the same period, 105 iper 10G0, • and among Maori infants who survived the first month, the death rate in the succeeding eleven months was 82 per 1000, as compared with only 10 per 1000 in the case of Europeans. The reason given for the separation of European from Maori vital statistics is officially stated to be principally that "a! considerably lower standard of accuracy and completeness of data exists in the case of Maori registrations than in the .general death records." This explanation is not wholly satisfactory. It should not preclude the statistician from first of all setting out the bivtli and death rates, etc., of the total ipppulation, European and Maori, and. then separating them. At present the official explanation leaves room for the supposition (which may be wrong) that the Maori infant mortality rate is even greater than 105 per 1000. But, whatever the true figure may be, it is deplorably high, and the sooner there is a widespread knowledge of it the sooner will the need be realised for action to remove the causes,, which are known and removable. •