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| View Larger Image | Birth, Poverty And Wealth - A Study Of Infant Mortality | Paperbackby Richard M. Titmuss (Author)
| List Price: | $26.45 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Titmuss Press | | Page Count: | 116 Pages | | Publication Date: | March 15, 2007 | | Sales Rank: | 4,606,071th |
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Text extracted from opening pages of book: BIRTH, POVERTY AND WEALTH A STUDY OF INFANT MORTALITY by RICHARD M. TITMUSS Lords and Commons of England, dbnsider what nation it is whereof ye are and whereof ye are the governors , . . . MILTON 1943 HAMISH HAMILTON MEDICAL BOOKS 90 GREAT RUSSELL STREET LONDON, W. C. I FOREWORD The new-born child feels the impact of all the forces in his environment. His chances of survival and healthy Development depend of course on his congenital equip ment, but only in part ; to a very large measure they turn on such external influences as the wealth of his parents and their capacity to take advantage of the medical knowledge and social services available for his welfare. The sum total of all these factors of inborn susceptibilities and resistances and external supports and stresses finds expression in the infant mortality rate, the trend of which thus provides, as Mr. Titmuss shows in these pages, an instrument of precision in the measurement of human progress. He also shows that correctly applied, by the simple but most ingenious methods described in the text, this sociological device yields information that is new, unexpected and deeply disturbing. About the statistical data themselves there can be no dispute. They are drawn from authoritative sources and, in this particular, Mr. Titmuss's only achievement has been in the skill and patience with which he has inte grated material scattered through official reports and the other documents named in his impressive bibliography. ^ Briefly, what they amount to is, first, that the rate of infant mortality in Great Britain is highest in the poorest - economic groups and lowest in the well-to-do, falling progressively, group by group, with every step up the social scale ; secondly, that in the between-wars period the rates have fallen in every group ; and thirdly, that the present figures, though representing a considerable improvement on the past, shew up badly against those prevailing in some other countries for instance, New Zealand or, to come nearer home, pre-war Holland. All this, taken at its face vajue, would seem to offer some grounds for satisfaction, if not for complacency. It suggests that if our maternal and infant welfare services and other measures for safeguarding infant health have not developed as far as they should and no informed person believes that they have they at least are on the right lines and capable, in the ordinary process of growth, of producing the desired ends. What we need is not, it seems, new and differently conceived measures but rather a multiplication of those that have served us so well in the past. This agreeable conclusion finds no support in Mr. Tittnuss's pages. The question with which he is con cerned beginning his study where most others leave off is whether the welcome decline in the absolute rates of infant mortality has been accompanied by a change in the gradient of inequality between the different social and economic classes. It would hardly seem necessary to examine statistics for an answer, and Mr. Titmuss is possibly the first to have done so. Even on the most pessimistic assessment of the achievement of our maternal and child welfare services, and of the consequences that could be expected from the extension to all classes of knowledge and opportunities that formerly were accessible mainly to the well-to-do, it could be assumed that class differences in infant mortality have at least remained constant ; and in fact doctors, statisticians and public health workers in general have taken the more encouraging and apparently more reasonable View that the gap be tween the classes has become narrower with the years. 6 Unfortunately, neither assumption accords with the facts now revealed in Mr. Titmuss's analysis of the recorded figures. The absolute infantile death rates among the poorer groups have indeed declined ; but relatively to those in the economically better-favoured groups, they are higher, far h |
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