Death rates in the 20th century

File:Trends in birth and death rates 1850-2000.tiff

Trends in Birth and Death Rates 1850-2000

Death Rates of the 20th Century

According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July 2012, the global crude death rate is 7.99 deaths/1,000 population. Crude death rate represents the total number of deaths per year per thousand people. Comparatively, the crude death rate in the year 1900 was 17.2 deaths/1,000 population and 9.6 deaths/1,000 population in 1950.

Highest Crude Death Rates Worldwide

CIA- The World Factbook

Rank	Country	Deaths/1,000 Population
1	South Africa	17.23
2	Ukraine	15.76
3	Lesotho	15.18
4	Chad	15.16
5	Guinea-Bissau	15.01
6	Central African Republic	14.71
7	Afghanistan	14.59
8	Somalia	14.55
9	Bulgaria	14.32
10	Swaziland	14.21
11	Russia	14.10
12	Belarus	13.90
13	Mali	13.90
14	Serbia	13.81
15	Estonia	13.60
16	Latvia	13.60
17	Nigeria	13.48
18	Zambia	13.40
19	Niger	13.40
20	Namibia	13.09

Cause of Death

The 20th century saw a transition from infectious diseases such as influenza, to degenerative diseases such as cancer or diabetes as the leading cause of death in the developed world. In 1900, the leading cause of death in the United States was Influenza with 202.2 deaths per 100,000 people followed by tuberculosis with 194.4, which is an easily curable illness today. In the middle of 20th century America, the leading cause of death was heart disease with an impressive 355.5 deaths per 100,000 followed by Cancer at 139.8 deaths per 100,000. Although death rates dropped significantly in the latter part of the 20th century, the leading killers are still constant. The United States saw 129.9 people per 100,000 die from heart disease in 2010 followed by cancer with 185.9 people per 100,000.

The 20th century experienced a large amount of death due to two major world wars. World War II was responsible for the most war related deaths in the 1900's with a death toll between 40,000,000 and 72,000,000 deaths. Other predominate wars in the 1900's include World War I with up to 65,000,000 deaths, the Russian Civil War with up to 9,000,000 deaths, the Afghan Civil War will up to 2,000,000 deaths, and the Mexican Revolution with up to 2,000,000. Several other major wars took place in the 20th century, such as the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet War in Afghanistan, the second Sudanese civil war, the Korean War, and the Vietnam war.

Aging Population

A natural population increase transpires when birth rates are higher than death rates. However, post World War II saw an explosion in birth rates faster than would be natural, called the Baby Boom. The Baby Boom occurred when all of the soldiers returned to their homes around the world and started new families. Death rates were significantly lower during the post World War baby boom and thus populations increased substantially. The mass population of people that were all born simultaneously during the Baby Boom, are aging together, meaning the overall population is getting older. The aging population means there will be a dramatic decrease in population size from the increase in death rates over the next decade or so.

Fertility rates and consequently live birth rates declined over the century, while age-adjusted death rates fell more dramatically. Children in 1999 were 10 times less likely to die than children in 1900.

For adults 24–65, death rates have been halved. The death rate for Americans aged 65 to 74 fell from nearly 7% per year to fewer than 2% per year.

The introduction of vaccines for several diseases led to reduced mortality from them. Again developed countries felt the greatest benefit. In the 20th century, vaccines became available for many diseases which caused deaths: diphtheria, pertussis, tuberculosis, tetanus, yellow fever, polio, measles, hepatitis among others.

However, war, genocide and Holocausts led to many millions of deaths throughout the century, and late in the century AIDS had already killed millions, particularly in Africa and south-east Asia. Cancer also killed millions via lifestyle and pollution generated by industrialization.

Improvements in Public Health

During the 20th century, an enormous improvement in public health led to an overall decrease in death rates. Infant mortality rates and maternal mortality rates have dramatically decreased. In the early 1900's, 6-9 women died in pregnancy-related complications for every 1000 births, while 100 infants died before they were 1 year old. In 1999, at the end of the century, the infant mortality rate in the United States declined more than 90% to 7.2 deaths per 1000 live births. Similarly, maternal mortality rates declined almost 99% to less than 0.1 reported deaths per 1000 live births.

There are a variety of causes for this steep decline in death rates in the 20th century:

• Environmental interventions

• Improvement in nutrition

• Advances in clinical medicine (sulfonamide in 1937, penicillin in the 1940's)

• Improved access to health care

• Improvements in surveillance and monitoring disease

• Increases in education levels

• Improvement in standards of living.

Despite these tremendous decreases in infant mortality and maternal mortality, the 20th century experienced significant disparities between minority death rates compared to death rates for white mothers. In the 1900's, black women were twice as likely to die while giving birth compared to white women. Towards the end of the 20th century, black women are three times as likely to die while giving birth. This disparity is often cited as a lack in stronger health care policy in the United States.

See also

• Death rate
• List of countries by death rate
• Birth rate
• Mortality rate