Report of the International Conference on the Perinatal and Infant Mortality Problem of the United States / under the sponsorship of the National Center for Health Statistics, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

  • United States. Public Health Service.
Date:
1966
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the International Conference on the Perinatal and Infant Mortality Problem of the United States / under the sponsorship of the National Center for Health Statistics, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Dr. Greenberg felt that the mortality rates of death under 24 hours should be reduced by Netherlands and Denmark for first-day mor- tality. Conversely, deaths under 1 calendar day for the Netherlands and Denmark should be in- creased by 33!/3 percent so that the data for first-day mortality would be more comparable to the United States, England and Wales, Norway, and Scotland. If first-day mortality is increased in certain countries, then deaths tabulated as 1-6 days of age must be decreased correspondingly. The general conclusion at this point was that these statistical artifacts were not suf- ficiently large to account for all the differences in first-day and first-week mortality between the United States and the European nations under in- vestigation here. Next, Dr. Greenberg summarized the in- cidence and significance of demographic fac- tors such as age of mother, birth order, and birth weight which were discussed by Dr. van den Berg in a paper distributed at the conference. He concluded, in concurrence with Dr. van den Berg, that although the distributions of live births by the mother's age and by birth order are not favorable in the United States compared with those in the Western European countries, they do not account for the total differences in the neo- natal mortality rates. Emphasis was placed on the significantly higher incidence of low-birth-weight babies inthe United States. While the United States had 8.2 percent live births of 2,500 grams or less in 1963, England and Wales had 6.6 percent. The Table 3. Percent of live Netherlands estimated about 5.5 percent in a special survey in 1954; and Norway currently estimates about 5-6 percent. Even though neonatal mortality of these low-birth-weight babies may be essentially the same for the various countries, the fact that the United States appears to have a greater proportion of these births has a signifi- cant effect on its neonatal mortality rate. A look at registration practices and other factors such as sex ratio, plurality of birth, illegitimacy, age of mother, and birth order indicated that they do not seem to account for the observed inter- national differences in the incidence of low-birth- weight infants. Dr. Greenberg continued the discussion of low birth weight by considering whether the high incidence of small babies in the United States was genetic or cultural. He looked at the data for two States with high proportions of people of Scand- inavian background. Within the two States, Min- nesota and North Dakota, he compared the pro- portion of low-birth-weight babies in the counties with the highest percentage of Scandinavians to that of counties with the lowest percentage as determined by 1960 Census data. In Minnesota, the Scandinavian background was defined to in- clude Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish stock. In North Dakota it included Norwegian and Swedish backgrounds only. In order to obtain meaningful data, Dr. Greenberg combined data for the years 1955-59, The data showed that the counties with the highest percentage of Scandinavian stock had a lower proportion of births of 2,500 grams or less than did the counties with the lowest pro- portion of Scandinavian stock (table 3), Minnesota and North Dakota, Place 14 North Dakota