Death Rates

• Death Rates

  The number of deaths per 1000 of the population per year. In 1900 it was 19 whereas in 2012 it had more than halved to 8.9. 2024 it was 9.48.
• Death rates have fallen due to:

  • Better standards of living
  • NHS
  • Better health care
  • Nutrition
• Improved Nutrition

  Mckeown 1972 argues that improved nutrition accounted for u to half the reduction in death rates. However, he doesn't explain why women live longer than men
• Improved Nutrition

  Nutrition is important in reducing the number of deaths from TB. Better Nutrition increased resistance to infection. Mckeown fails to explain why deaths from infectious diseases, such as measles, rose at the time of improving nutrition.
• Medical Improvements

  • Before the 1950s, medical Improvements played no part in the reduction of deaths from infection
  • After the 1950s improved medical knowledge helped reduce death rates
• Medical Improvements

  • Advances including the introduction of antibiotics, immunisation, improved maternity services as well as the NHS in 1948
  • Recently, improved medication, bypass surgery, and other developments have reduced deaths from heart disease by ⅓
• Smoking and diet

  • Harper believes the greatest fall in death rates was due to the reduction in people smoking
  • However, obesity has replaced smoking e.g In 2011, 1/4 of all UK adults were obese.
• Smoking and diet

  • Obesity has increased, but deaths from obesity have been kept low, due to drug therapies.
  • Harper suggests we're moving to an American unhealthy lifestyle but where a long life span is achieved bu the use of costly medication.
• Public health measures

  • More effective central and local government passed and enforced laws that led to improved pubic health
  • Improved housing (drier, ventilated, less overcrowding)
• Public health measures

  • Improved sewage disposal methods
  • Clean air acts - reduced air pollution, such as smog that led to 4,000 deaths in five days in 1952
• Other social changes

  • Decline of dangerous manual occupations (mining)
  • Smaller families reduced the rate of transmission of infection
  • Greater public knowledge of the cause of illness
  • Higher incomes, allowing healthier lifestyle
• Life expectancy

  How long, on average a person born in a given year, will live for

  • As the death rate decreases, life expectancy increases
  • In 1900, the life expectancy for men was 50 and women 57
  • However, men born in 2013 will be expected to live until 90.7 and women 94
• Life expectancy

  • Infant mortality rates were higher in 1900
  • A newborn baby today has a better chance of reaching the age of 65 than a baby born in 1900 had of reaching their first birthday
• Class differences

  Working class - higher death rates, more likely to drink and smoke, they can't pay for private healthcare, longer wait lists.
• Gender differences

  Women live longer than men. Women living in the north and Scotland have a lower life expectancy - Deprivation.