The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1912. VITAL STATISTICS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 48, 21 October 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1912. VITAL STATISTICS.

The advance sheets of the official Year Book, Lsued at the end of last week, give an exhaustive analysis of the vital statistics, particularly with regard to the birth-rate, for the Dominion. These figures indicate tjuite clearly that New Zealand’s experience in this regard is exactly similar to that of most other so-termed civilised countries. In the year 1911 the number of births registered in New Zealand was 26,354, or 25.97 in every thousand persons living. The rum her is 370 above that in the year 1910, an increase of 1.42 per cent., the rate, however, being lower by 0.20 pir thousand. In 1878 the rate was 337 per 1000, in 1890 it had fallen to 252, in 1901 to 244, in 1906 to 228, and in 1911 to 209.2. The average number of children to a marriage is shown to have declined steadily from 4.54 in 1892 to 3.07 in 1911. Another calculation shows that the number of children under one year of tge in 1911 —24,224 —was only 116 more than the number of living children of that age at the census of 1906. The birthrates in the four cities was slightly higher last year than in 1910. Though this is accounted for by the fact that many maternity cases treated in the cities come from the country for the sake of better attention. New Zealand had in 1880 the highest birth-rate in Australasia (40.78). In 1900 the case was reversed, and in 1911 it was lower than tho&e of all the Australian States, except Victoria. Thus with twice the number of people that New Zealand had within her borders some thirty years ago, the birth-rate Last year was nearly 25 per cent, less than that of 1882. With the exception of a few years in the later nineties and in 1900 and 1902, it is the lowest yet recorded, and New Zealand is now last but one on the list of Australasian birth-rates, whereas in 1880 she was at the top. From that year to 1899 the rate fell steadily, reaching its lowest recorded point in the latter year with 25.12 per thousand of the population. From 1899 it rose gradually until 1908, when it reached 27.45, about equal with the figure of fifteen years earlier. Since then it has declined more rapidly than it rose. The Registrar-General’s figures also show that the total number of deaths last year was 9534. Of that number 3464 children died under the age 1 of fifteen years, including 1484 who died under one year. No fewer than 751 children died within one month of their birth. Sixty-three out of every thousand male children born, and forty-nine out of every thousand females, are found to have died in 1911 before attaining the age

of one year. ' The mortality was Urns one in JO of male children, and one in 21 of females. The figures for ten years show that the deaths of infants under one year are in the large proportion of three-fourths of the total deaths under live years. Although 17,070 infants under one year were lost to the Dominion during the decade 1901-11, and including these, 21,890 children under five, the third table shows New South Wales and "Victoria, to be even worse in the matter of the preservation of infant life. Altogether, the figures arc not encouraging reading from a national standpoint.