EDWARD BUNNELL PHELPS, M. A., F. s. s. 181 



1909 and 1910, the infant death rate of the City of New York 

 in the third quarter of 1910 was precisely identical with that 

 for the corresponding quarter of 1909, namely, 169 per 1,000 

 registered living births. And the seeming inflexibility of sum- 

 mer infant mortality is strongly confirmed by the fact that in 

 the entire State of Connecticut, of course including the rural 

 districts along with the cities, the infant death rate in the third 

 quarter of 1910 was practically identical with that for the corre- 

 sponding quarter of 1909, being 193 per 1,000 registered living 

 births this year as compared with 192 per 1,000 registered living 

 births in 1909. To be sure, comparisons for only two years are by 

 no means convincing, but it is at least notable that in the case of 

 both one of the world's greatest cities and an adjoining State 

 with a scattered population barely one-fifth as large as that 

 of the great metropolis, in the third quarter of 1909 and 1910 

 the respective infant death rates for both years should be prac- 

 tically identical. If allowance were to be made for the probable 

 slight improvement in the registration of births in both in- 

 stances in 1910, of course that would mean that the actual infant 

 death rates for the third quarter in both cases were slightly 

 larger in 1910 than in 1909. But, in any event, the figures 

 would seem to show that, in so far as merely two-year records 

 can tell the story, the infant mortality in both cases was quite 

 as high this year as last year, to say the least. 



In the final tables appended to this paper, Tables VII and 

 VIII, I have attached a succinct statement of the number and 

 percentage of infant deaths in the Registration Area of the 

 United States in the last 10 years due to the four principal 

 causes of infant mortality, aside from diseases of the respiratory 

 system, namely, diarrhoea and enteritis, those diseases of early 

 infancy, premature birth and congenital debility, and that cause 

 of death perhaps more or less closely allied with the causes which 

 contribute to premature birth and congenital debility, to wit., 

 malformations. In the decade 1900-1909, these four classes of 

 causes of deaths were responsible for no less than 52.05 per 

 cent, of all the deaths under age 1 recorded in the Registration 

 Area of the United States, and in the latter half of that period 

 the percentage of deaths due to them was considerably higher 

 than in the former half, namely, 54.19 as compared with 49.33. 

 In every case except that of congenital debility, the percentage 

 of deaths from each of these four causes was higher in 1905- 

 1909 than in 1900-1904. Probably the inclusion of five addi- 

 tional States with many heavily-populated cities in the Regis- 

 tration Area in the latter half of the period had something to 

 do with increasing the percentage of deaths due to these causes 

 in 1905-1909 as compared with 1900-1904, but my recollection 



