The Registrar General's Statistical Review of England and Wales for the Year 1959, Part III,Commentary.Review by: N. H. CarrierJournal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 126, No. 1 (1963), pp. 143-144Published by: Wiley for the Royal Statistical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2982468 .

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1963] Reviews 143

18. The Registrar General's Statistical Review of England and Wales for the Year 1959, Part IH, Commentary. London, H.M. Stationery Office, 1961. xvii, 256 p. 9k". 18s. 6d.

The topics chosen for special study in the mortality section of Part III of the 1959 Review are mortality according to marital status, and a current assessment of deaths from congenital malformations.

In the study of mortality according to marital condition, death rates are compared for each sex by age for single and married persons and a combined group of the divorced and widowed. This comparison confirms earlier findings, that for both sexes and for all ages, death rates in recent years have been lowest for the married, and highest for the single except for the oldest ages, where the widowed and divorced are shown to have slightly higher death rates than the single. A higher death rate for the single is to be expected because those with certain diseases will tend to avoid marriage. For the first time the Registrar-General, by showing the differentials for each cause of death (age standardized by a standardized mortality ratio), permits theories such as this to be tested. In this case supporting evidence is found from a higher S.M. R. for the single for tuberculosis. But it is shown that this is not the whole story since those who had ever been married were shown to suffer higher mortality from causes associated with sex and reproduction.

Similarly the tuberculosis S.M.R. support the theory that the higher mortality of the widowed than the married may derive in part from the common environment shared by husband and wife (so that premature death by one is likely to be followed unduly soon by the death of the other). But again it is shown that other factors must be operating, since the mortality of the widowed and divorced is slightly higher than that for the married for almost every cause of death (but not as much greater as that for tuberculosis).

It would have clarified the position to have made a distinction by socio-economic group, but this was unfortunately not possible.

The second special study-of deaths from congenital malformations-is part of the campaign to attack the "hard core" of still-births and infant deaths, a campaign which will be strengthened when data on causes of still-births, now being collected, have been analysed.

The continued maintenance in 1959 of the high marriage rates that have characterized the post-war years had already been shown in Part II of the Review. A new feature now shown for the first time, however, is the publication of separate marriage rates for widows and divorced women, for each year from 1951 to 1959. (The difficulty in producing such rates derives from errors in statement of marital condition in marriage entries and at the census.)

This new analysis shows that re-marriage rates are higher for divorced women than for widows but that the rates for widows have been increasing since 1951, whilst those for divorced women have been falling.

The pressure being put upon women to marry, deriving from their increasing shortage, is shown by the proportion of men aged 45-49 ever-married, which has only risen from 89 0 per cent. in 1931 to 91b6 per cent. in 1959, whilst the similar rise for women has been from 83-2 per cent. to 88 5 per cent.

The index of the extent of extra-maritally conceived maternities, related to the popu- lation of unmarried women and standardized for age (1938=100), which had risen to 178 in 1958, rose further to 184 in 1959. This is due mainly to a rise in illegitimate mater- nities rather than in premaritally conceived legitimate maternities in which the child is born after the timely marriage of the parents.

Legitimate maternity rates by age at marriage, duration of marriage and cohort, i.e. year of marriage, are brought together to permit comparison of corresponding rates for successive cohorts. These show that the recent rise in the birth rate has been shared by women marrying at all but the oldest ages and at all durations under about 15-20 years. At longer durations, the increasing restriction on child-bearing continues.

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144 Reviews [Part 1,

On the strength of this evidence, the Registrar-General is now "forecasting" the ultimate family size of women marrying in the early 1950's as around 2-2 to 2-3 children, about the same as of women marrying in the early 1920's. At the present low level of mortality, this family size would, of course, be more than sufficient to ensure replacement.

N. H. CARRIER

19. Nigerian Motor Vehicle Traffic. An Economic Forecast. By V. W. Hogg and C. M. Roelandts. Oxford University Press, for Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research, 1962. vi, 72 p. 7k". 10s. 6d. (Nigerian Social and Economic Studies, 2.)

The main purpose of this book is to provide forecasts of the number of motor vehicles in Nigeria in the year 1968, with particular emphasis on the methodology involved. In addition forecasts are made of the mileage which these vehicles will run and of the amount of fuel which they will consume. The authors are to be congratulated on the thoroughness with which they have pursued these aims, making full use of the available published statistics, and of the results of small-scale enquiries of their own. The analysis falls into two parts. The first part involves the study of past and current data to estimate such quantities as vehicle-mileage which are not directly available from published statistics; in the second part the statistics are projected forward to 1968.

Estimates of current vehicle-miles of travel are mainly derived from numbers of vehicles and estimates of miles per vehicle per year, but assistance is also obtained from fuel consumption data. The discussion of miles per vehicle per year and of miles per gallon emphasizes the inadequacy of current road traffic statistics. Truly representative estimates of these quantities are almost non-existent even in more highly motorized countries. The difficulties of obtaining reliable data are obvious and it is quite possible that less direct methods, using results of representative traffic counts, are to be preferred.

The part of the paper concerned with forecasting numbers of vehicles is thorough and reasonable but, as with most economic forecasting, the results can be little more than extrapolation of past trends, tempered by subjective judgements. Sophisticated econo- metric models which relate vehicle ownership to incomes and other economic factors are rejected on the grounds of lack of adequate data; in the reviewer's opinion, such methods are in any case of limited value until forecasts of the future levels of the economic factors can be made that are substantially better than extrapolations of past trends; this stage does not appear to have been reached even in the best-documented countries. In the absence of reliable economic forecasts, it would seem preferable to make intelligent extrapolations of current vehicle trends, as the authors have done.

While the book is not without errors, it can be strongly recommended to those interested in transport statistics for its full discussion of the methods available and of the difficulties encountered.

J. C. TANNER

20. National Income and Expenditure. By Richard and Giovanna Stone. 5th ed. London, Bowes and Bowes, [1961]. 118 p. 7X". 15s.

This book is a remarkable tour de force. Within a very short compass, Professor Stone and Mrs. Giovanna Stone have managed to provide: (i) a lucid introduction to the study of national income and expenditure at one point of time, as well as over space and time; (ii) a guide to the articulation of national income and expenditure into national accounts, by forms of economic activity and by sector; (iii) a survey of the present stage and prospects of research in this field in both its conceptual and empirical aspects, buttressed by a most useful bibliography, which has the merit of being refreshingly inter- national in scope; (iv) a fascinating set of comparative, mostly Anglo-American, illus- trations of the topics treated. Apart from the intrinsic interest of the data, these are made

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