title: The demographic viewpoint in the vital and health statistics monographs of The American Public Health Association.
abstract: The plan calls for monographs on 16 specific topics and a review volume. The specific topics include a monograph on fertility, another on marriage and divorce, and one on social and economic factors in mortality, all of which are of obvious demographic interest. The core of the development of the monographs dealing with the disease topics, and accidents, homicide, and suicide, is a tabulation program involving specific and age-adjusted death rates based upon the deaths in the United States for the three year period 1959-61 and the 1960 census of population. The program called for a set of standard tabulations common to each monograph and also a set of special tabulations tailored to meet the particular needs for each topic as specified by its authors. This wealth of demographic detail regarding mortality in the United States during 1959-61 fills only one aspect of its health picture. To fill out the health picture, use is being made of the great volume of morbidity data out of the National Health Interview and Examination Surveys and a wide variety of other specialized surveys. In all of these, the findings are invariably described in terms of the demographic characteristics of age and sex, and frequently in terms of such social-economic variables as education, income, work status, and occupational class.A large part of the content of the monograph on social and economic factors in mortality will come out of available results of the 1960 census-death certificate matching study at the University of Chicago. One important feature of this monograph, not contained in the Chicago study, is a regression and correlation analysis of total mortality in 202 Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas in relation to a large number of social, economic, and climatic factors. Among the features in the monograph on fertility are chapters on the medical and biological characteristics of births, fecundity and family planning, and an analysis of cohort fertility trends. The monograph on marriage and divorce will make use of the detailed tabulations from the 1960 census on marital status in relation to education, race, parentage, earnings and other classifications of individuals and of husband and wife in married couples. It will also contain a matching study of divorce records in certain states for a short period before the census of 1960 with the returns in the census. The project is supported by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (CH 00075; formerly RG 08262). Publication will be by the Harvard University Press.
authors.affiliation: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Spiegelman