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Infant mortality rates vary from area to area. Part of this variation is due to the socioeconomic characteristics of the area and part to other factors including the obstetric, paediatric, and community health services. Four social indicators associated with infant deaths are used to control for some of the variations in socioeconomic characteristics and residual variation is then examined. The four social indicators are the level of unemployment, the proportion of large families, the proportion of lone-parent families, and the level of overcrowding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the General Household Survey were employed to compare the participation rates, hours worked, earnings, and net incomes of families with and without a disabled child. In families with a disabled child it was found that the spouse was significantly more likely to work the more children there were in the family and that income, and income as a proportion of supplementary benefit entitlement, was lower. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the absence of nationally representative data on the prevalence of disability among children, a special analysis of relevant data in the General Household Survey (GHS) was carried out. A long-standing illness, disability or infirmity was present in 7.6% of the children under 16 in the 1974 sample of the GHS. An assessment of the extent to which the children were disabled resulted in 10% of the children being classified as severe, 29% as moderate, and 61% as mild. About half of the children classified as severe had a congenital anomaly or suffered from a mental disorder. Prevalence rates for specific conditions were compared with those obtained in other studies. Compared with all children in the survey, significantly more of the severely and moderately disabled children were boys than girls, and significantly more came from the skilled manual socioeconomic groups. The proportion of lone parent families was not significantly different from that in the overall sample. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]