>still, it is clear that *adult* mortality rates have declined with
>industrialization and modernization ['progress'], as have *infant*
>mortality rates. people did die at younger ages inthe olden daze;
since 1980 the reduction in adult mortality rates has not been impressive (about 15%); however, it has increased in parts of the world. Moreover, with the attack on public health systems via structural adjustment, it seems to me that we should check the data by income group. Perhaps the Princeton Population Center has this kind of data--thank you for the recommendation. It's not available at the world bank web cite. Moreover, for some reason, the World Bank did not give a world wide summary statistic on reduction in child mortality, which the World Bank itself admits is the greatest indicator of how well functioning a health monitoring system is. But if you look at the individual countries, the reduction is not impressive at all. And again no attempt to disaggregate it by class or income. So children seem to be still dying at roughly the same rate over the last twenty years. Again, one imagines that this is especially true for the poor.
Yours, Rakesh