the registrar general's quarterly return for england and wales. fourth quarter, 1962

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The Registrar General's Quarterly Return for England and Wales. Fourth Quarter, 1962. Review by: N. H. Carrier Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 126, No. 3 (1963), pp. 481-482 Published by: Wiley for the Royal Statistical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2982246 . Accessed: 25/06/2014 10:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Wiley and Royal Statistical Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General). http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 193.105.154.120 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 10:14:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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The Registrar General's Quarterly Return for England and Wales. Fourth Quarter, 1962.Review by: N. H. CarrierJournal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 126, No. 3 (1963), pp. 481-482Published by: Wiley for the Royal Statistical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2982246 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 10:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Wiley and Royal Statistical Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toJournal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General).

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.105.154.120 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 10:14:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

1963] Reviews 481

same model is subjected to a simulation study to explore the response surface as a function of various levels of the design parameters, response being measured conventionally as the present value of 50 years' net benefits at a 2 per cent. rate of interest. The exploration is carried out partly by uniform grid ("factorial") mapping, supplemented by spot-checks, partly by steepest ascent methods, and partly by randomly selected combinations of factor levels. Any team contemplating a similar study would find this section very valuable. This section closes with chapters outlining the linear programming approach and Moran's stochastic theory of reservoirs.

It would not be a wild exaggeration to describe hydrology as a branch of applied statistics (at any rate a large proportion of its basic concepts and outstanding problems are statistical), but it has not hitherto received anything like its due share of attention from statisticians. By displaying and surveying so attractively the problems of water system design the book under review will, one hopes, go far towards rectifying this neglect.

E. H. LLOYD

19. The Registrar General's Quarterly Return for England and Wales. Fourth Quarter, 1962. London, H.M.S.O., 1963. 24 p. 93'. 2s. 6d.

The analysis of marriages for the fourth quarter of 1962 has not yet been completed, but the numbers in the first three quarters of the year are slightly down on those for the corresponding quarters of 1961 so that, unless there is a substantial compensating increase in the fourth quarter, a slight drop in the marriage rate for 1962 will be registered. This would not be surprising, since the detailed analyses included in the Registrar General's Statistical Reviews have shown that, in recent years, the relative lack of potential brides is at last beginning to impede a continuation of a high marriage rate.

The birth rate for the quarter (16-7) showed a continuation of the upward trend, and the rate for 1962 as a whole (18-0) was the highest since the "abnormal" year, 1947 (20 5), when the bulk of births postponed from the war were being made good. The birth rate for 1951-55, the period of a level rate falling between the post-war abnormal years and the beginning of the present upward trend, was 15 2.

The death rate for the quarter (11 9) was the same as for the corresponding quarter of 1961. The death rate for the whole year 1962 (11 9) was slightly lower than that of 1961 (12-0), but higher than the rate for all other years since 1951. The rate at which the population is "ageing" is now so fast that, despite the continuing decline in age-specific death rates, rising crude all-ages death rates are to be expected. If allowance is made for the effect of ageing, the mortality of 1962 is lower than that of almost all previous years.

Both the infant mortality rate (21 4) and still-birth rate (18 0) for the fourth quarter of 1962 show substantial improvements over the corresponding rates for 1961 (23 4 and 19-7 respectively). The infant mortality rate for the year 1962 (21 4) was only trivially lower than that for 1961 (21 6), but the year's still-birth rate (18 1) was substantially lower than the 1961 rate of 19 1.

The interpretation of the recent rising trend in the crude birth rate is not easy. Part is undoubtedly due to the falling age at marriage and part is probably due to a continuation of the trend for births to be increasingly concentrated in the early years of marriage. Neither of these effects would necessarily imply an increase in the size of completed families. The residual part of the rise, it would be presumed, represents a definite rise in family size of those marriage cohorts currently passing through the child-bearing part of their marriage. But even this effect might not be permanent, in the sense that, whereas they will have larger families than their immediate predecessors, their immediate successors might decide not to follow their example. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Government Actuary and Registrar General were reluctant to make substantial increases in the assumed births, on which their annual population projections are based, until the rising trend in the birth rate had had time to demonstrate that it was more than ephemeral. It now appears that the analyses that they no doubt make have led them to interpret this rise in the birth

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482 Reviews [Part 3,

rate as indicating a probable permanent rise in ultimate family size. In 1955, when the birth rate was still falling, they were basing their projections on an assumed 600,000 births per year by the end of the century. They made small token upward adjustments to this in the early years of the rising trend until by 1959 the assumed births at the end of the century had risen to 790,000. A large rise was made in the assumption for 1960, to 925,000, a further increase to 960,000 in 1961 and a further rise to 1,130,000 has been made for the 1962 projections. It may therefore be assumed that their calculations show that the current high birth rate contains only a relatively small temporary element and that it implies a steady rise in ultimate family size.

The unusual net inward balance of migration in recent years, and a large balance at that, also has led to increases in the implied population by the end of the century. [Recent projections have, for the first time, included an allowance for a net inward balance of migration.] The total population of 46,768,000 at mid-1962 is shown to increase to 63,774,000 by the year 2002 in the current projection.

The proportion of children under age 15 is shown to rise from 226 per 1,000 population of all ages in 1962 to 254 in the year 2002, and the proportion of persons of the age of retirement (males over age 65 and females over 60) to rise from 149 in 1962 to 164 between 1977 and 1982 and to decline to 143 by 2002. The sex ratio of persons aged 60 and over shows a dramatic change from 699 males per 1,000 females in 1962 to 809 in 2002.

N. H. CARRIER

20. Morbidity Statistics from General Practice. Vol. III (Disease in General Practice). By The Research Committee of the Council of the College of General Practitioners. London, H.M.S.O., 1962. v, 143 p. 9-". 16s. 6d. (Studies on Medical and Population Subjects, No. 14.)

The study of a year's consultations in more than a hundred general practices through- out the country, on which this is the third and latest report, is, by any standards, a considerable achievement. The problems of organization alone can easily be imagined. The result is the closing of an important gap in the spectrum of information about ill health-from mortality statistics and hospital studies at one end to data of the type collected in the late lamented Survey of Sickness at the other. It is an excellent example of the kind of cooperative research possible between individuals in the National Health Service and a government department, each making an indispensable contribution.

The total population covered, 380,000, was that of a large town (like Nottingham) or of a medium-sized county (like Bedfordshire). Two main indices of the impact of disease are used: total consultation rates per thousand at risk, and patient consulting rates per thousand-that is the number of separate patients consulting (for a given disease). The first is a useful rough measure of the amount of work caused by a given disease and the second corresponds to a "period prevalence" rate.

The present volume is a series of papers by general practitioners who themselves either took part in the planning of the survey or in the collection of data. Each has taken a group of diseases-defined either in terms of the system of the body affected-e.g. respiratory diseases, diseases of the nervous system and eyes, cardiovascular diseases-or in terms of the age of the patient-diseases of childhood and of the aged.

This method of obtaining information about sickness makes its unique contribution in diseases of the respiratory system (which account for one-quarter of the doctor's work), of the nervous system and sense organs, of the digestive system and of the circulatory system, the common conditions of general practice about which it is impossible to get valid information from any other source. Valuable indications of the variation of these and other conditions with age, sex and season are shown. Regional differences are perhaps less reliable since some regions are represented by very few practices.

Every system of collecting data on morbidity, however, has its limitations which some of the authors point out. The interesting chapter on psychiatric disorders, for instance,

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