Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Demography 395
129. Again in the United States, the studies undertaken by the National Center
for Health Statistics, and in particular those based on data collected since 1956
by the National Health Survey through repeated sample surveys on disease and
mortality rates in the population, are on similar lines.
130. In the International Biological Programme (IBP), which was established
jointly in 1966 by 44 nations and is to continue for a period of ten years, pro-
vision is made for a section on man’s adaptability to his environment, which
wil also be dealing with the same problems.
131. This idea that, to arrive at an understanding of a person’s ‘state of health’,
it is necessary to take into consideration the whole of his past life, has led to the
development of research on differential mortality according to social environ-
ment.
The various statistical services in theUnitedKingdom have for a long time cal-
culated mortality figures according to social class. These figures are difficult
to calculate because they represent a relation, in the case of the numerator, to
data on mortality (that is to say, data supplied by the statistics on population
trends) and, in the case of the denominator, to data supplied by the census. The
factor common to both numerator and denominator is the social class, and this
factor is therefore determined by reference to different statistical documents.
This is bound to result in a lack of homogeneity which falsifies the results. In
the United Kingdom, this dificulty is overcome thanks to the high quality of
the demographic statistics. But the same does not apply elsewhere and other
methods have recently been devised.
132. The Population Research and Training Center of Chicago University, in
co-operation with the national service concerned with population trends and the
United States Census Bureau, compared the death certificates of 340,000 per-
sons who died during the four months (May-August) immediately following
the census of April 1960 with the census returns for those deceased persons. It
was thus possible to determine the ‘social class’ factor from the census report
alone.
Over the past fifteen years, a similar method has been used in France for cal-
culating the infant mortality rate in the various social classes. The death
certificates of the children are compared with their birth certificates.
133. Another method used in France for calculating the adult mortality rate
consists in keeping a record over the years of a sample group of persons drawn
from a population census. This makes it possible to calculate mortality rates
according to generation.
134. Mention may also be made of a biometrical survey in Hungary, on a
sample of 720 persons chosen from among the candidates in the year 1966 for
the university or professional colleges, undertaken by the Research Group for
Population Studies of Budapest. The object of this survey is to follow the per-