Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/38

34 mortality rate was found among 10,618 Jewish families, including 60,630 persons living in the United States December 31, 1889. In the figures published in Census Bulletin No. 19 (Washington, December 30, 1890) it appears that the death rate was only 7.11 per 1,000, which is but 'little more than half the annual death rate among other persons of the same social class and conditions living in this country.'

The low death rates of the Jews are more strikingly demonstrated when compared with the mortality of the christian population of the countries in which they live. This is done in the fourth column of figures in the table; the mortality of the non-Jewish population is taken as 100. It is seen that the Jewish death rate in Algeria is but 89 per cent, of the mortality of the other Europeans in that country; in Bavaria it is a little over, and in European Russia even less than, fifty per cent, of the christian mortality. In other words, the death rates of the Jews are from eleven to fifty per cent, less than those of the christians.

These favorable mortality rates of the Jews are not a recent phenomenon. At all times when statistics on the subject were compiled it was found to be the case. The censuses of Prussia give some very interesting figures in this connection. The rates since 1820 were as follows:

It is thus seen that the mortality in Prussia has been sinking in recent years among both Jews and christians, decreasing by about twenty per cent, since 1878 in both groups. This is of course to be attributed to advancement in economic, social, hygienic and sanitary conditions. But it is remarkable that there is no change in the ratio of Jewish to the christian mortality; it was in 1878 sixty-nine per cent. of the mortality of the christian and remained the same in 1904. Hungary is another country where reliable statistics are available for fifteen years. The figures are as follows:

Here it is to be noted that the mortality of the Jews was in 1891 more favorable than in 1903. The decrease during the last fifteen