Children Under Five Years of Age.

The mortality for the first five years of life was derived from the deaths under five years of age in the thirteen years 1880-92, and the births in the twelve years 1880-91 The reason for this is, because the census returns for the page 6 period (0-4) in this colony are found to be defective. This is no new discovery, but has been found to existin the census returns in many countries. The defect consists in misstatement of the ages of children For example. a child of two years and ten months is by some called a child in its third year, and they would return the age as three years, whereas others would call it a child of two years, in one case the age is given as at next birthday, in the other at last birthday, and in this way confusion and error is produced, simply through ambiguity of the language employed.

In the above table the births and deaths for the thirteen years (1880-92) have been added up for a reason which will appear later on. The first step in the process is to sum the births of males for the twelve years 1880-91, the result is 116,611; the next is to sum the deaths in the first year of life for the thirteen years, and then deduct one-half of the deaths in 1880 and 1892 from the total, the result is 11,069, and the probability of dying in the first year of life is found by dividing the deaths 11,069 by 116,611, the number of births, this gives 09492=q0, and this value appears without any adjustment in the mortality table of males opposite age 0. In the same way the deaths of girls are found to be 8,955, and the births 111,556, and dividing the one by the other we get .08097, the probability of dying in the first year of life, and this value appears in the mortality table of females opposite age 0. The arithmetical compliment of .08027 is .91973, and is the probability of a female living one year at birth. The remaining four probabilities were found by similar equations.

It may now be stated that the sum of the births for the period 1880-92 is given for the purpose of bringing into view the sex proportion at birth. In this colony, and for the period under notice, it is found that for every l,000 girls born the number of boys is 1,044.7. This proportion is slightly under the average for some of the Australian colonies, but is above that for England and Wales; there, for the period 1881-90, the proportion was 1,0037 to 1,000. The cause of this physiological fact has never been satisfactorily explained. The sum of the deaths under five years is also given for each year, find for both sexes, for the purpose of showing that while the boys at birth exceed the girls, death claims a larger toll of the male sex than of the female. The deaths of boys in Table C sum up to 16.092, that of the girls to 13,355, and the difference is 2,737. As the difference between the sexes at birth was 5,381, it will be seen that fully one-half of it has disappeared before the fifth year is entered upon.