1. Deaths Among Taxpayers and Non-Taxpayers, Income Tax, Providence, 1865.
- Author
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Chapin, Charles V.
- Subjects
- *
DEATH rate , *EPIDEMIOLOGY , *PUBLIC health , *INCOME tax , *TUBERCULOSIS , *NEUROLOGICAL disorders - Abstract
This paper presents a reprint of the article Deaths Among Taxpayers and Non-Taxpayers, Income Tax, Providence, 1865, by Charles V. Chapin, which appeared in the 1924 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The adjusted death rate was higher among the non-taxpayers in every group of diseases except two; namely, certain general diseases represented by few deaths and the puerperal diseases. It is probably fairly indicative to use the children under one year of age as a base and according to this method the death rate for the puerperal diseases is 16.4 per 1,000 children among the taxpayers and 12.2 among the non-taxpayers. Opportunities for fecal contamination were in 1865 enormously greater among the poor and there was no municipal water supply. Pulmonary tuberculosis has always been a disease of poverty. Among the non-taxpayers, of the 34 deaths from diseases of the nervous system, under twenty years, it is probable that the large majority were due to some form of meningitis or encephalitis. There is very little difference between the two groups in the small number of deaths from genito-urinary diseases. Mortality attributed to old age is more than four times as great among non-taxpayers as among the taxpayers. Another point of interest is the relative prevalence of the so-called degenerative diseases of advancing years.
- Published
- 1999
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