Poverty - Main Cause of Death

Evidence vs Conjecture

It is well attested in all the scientific literature that poverty has significant impact on infant mortality and indeed on child and adult mortality as well. Recent studies from Canada reveal the infant mortality rate in the lowest-income urban neighbourhoods was 66% higher (6.5 deaths per 1000 live births) than in the highest-income urban neighbourhoods (3.9 deaths per 1000 live births).

Well known too is the fact that the drop in infant mortality rates is a relatively recent phenomenon. Take for example this graph below which shows that the infant mortality rates for England in 1930-32. It shows that the poorer classes suffered an infant mortality rate 250% higher than the highest social class. Surprisingly, even though infant mortality rates have dropped massively in the last half of the 20th century it the gap between rich and poor, as reflected by infant mortality data, remains at a staggering 195%.

Ireland was an impoverished country ravished by years of colonial misrule, it had no industry, Britain waged economic war against it and many other factors. It was not until the 1950s that the tide began to turn. Many attribute the decline in infant mortality to the arrival and availability of antibiotics, it was a factor but so too were improving social conditions like provision of modern social housing, water and drainage schemes, the increasing pasteurisation of milk and more.

The empirical data demonstrates that the hysteria around high mortality rates in the past is based on an inability to see historical data in its true context. Thus those lacking in knowledge are forced to anachronistically believe that the conditions of today excited in the past. Mind conjurings like communists under the bed, mass hysteria and witch hunts are not things of the past, especially in 21st century Ireland.

Infant mortality rates of both sexes by father’s social class in England and Wales, 1930/2-2001

References

Gupta, Rita Paul-Sen, Margaret L de Wit, and David McKeown. “The Impact of Poverty on the Current and Future Health Status of Children.” Paediatrics & Child Health 12, no. 8 (October 2007): 667–72.

Roser, Max. “Child Mortality.” OurWorldInData.org, 2017. https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality/ [Online Resource].

The chart data is taken from Table 4.3 of Roderick Floud, Robert W. Fogel, Bernard Harris, Sok Chul Hong (2011) – The Changing Body Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700. Cambridge University Press.