Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/418

414 life in the city than in the country. The death rate in New York City is low because owing to emigration from abroad and the influx of young people from the country an unusually large percentage of the population is at the age when deaths are few.

In order to compare populations of different age and sex constitutions it is necessary to recalculate the rates for a standard population. Our Census Bureau has rather oddly chosen the population of England as the permanent basis of standardized rates. This population is about as abnormal as could be found, it having resulted from a large birth rate rapidly declining and a large emigration. For example, there is an excess of 1,200,000 women. There should be an international convention to fix a standard population, either a weighted average of the populations of the countries having adequate statistics, or an ideal population resulting,