Several virtual cemetery sites were used to collect a sample of one hundred people for this assignment. Each of the cemeteries is located in the Canadian province of Ontario: a total of four different cemeteries were used.
In examining trends in infant mortality between the ages of 0 and 19, intriguing results were found. First, the total number of survivors in the sample was always more significant than the total number of deaths, which is quite natural. For the earlier period (<1950), no significant difference in mortality was found between boys and girls up to age nineteen. This differs from the later period (>1950), during which more girls died than boys. Also, more children survived in the later period: the percentage difference was about 56 percent compared to the pre-1950 period. The more remarkable survival appears to be due to increased access to medicine among children.
For the younger age group (20-39 years), again, it was found that survival was higher in the later period, with men surviving more often than women. It is likely that there may have been a higher prevalence of disease or increased mortality due to childbirth among the female population in this age group during this period, so it appears that men survived more often. It is noteworthy that this trend does not hold for the period before 1950, as men survived less than women. This may have been due to wartime when a large proportion of men were sent into combat, in which they could die either immediately or after a long time because of the traumatic effects. The apparent increased mortality of pre-1950 men between the ages of 20 and 29 may support this assumption. For the other age and gender groups, the mortality patterns seem to be similar.
For the elderly aged 60 and over, it has been shown that a smaller proportion survived before 1950 — the likely reason for this dynamic being the increased availability of medicine after 1950. It is also interesting that women, on average, survived less often than men after age 60, which means that diseases causing premature mortality may have been shared among the female population of the last century. In terms of the mortality index, men and women after 1950 showed similar ascending statistics with increasing age. Roughly the same was true before 1950: the change in mortality for men and women over the age of sixty was periodic and dynamic. This may be evidence of the ambiguity of the pre-1950 health agenda across age groups in the elderly or of the lack of an adequate system of death and age records. Also, the dynamic pattern of mortality changes could show the existence of national programs to protect specific age groups, which led to differences in mortality between people of similar ages.
The general patterns found can be summarized as follows. First, more people survived over time. Second, as age increased, more people, on average, died, which is quite natural for biological reasons. Third, on average, men survived more often than women, whose mortality was generally higher. These data correlate well with government statistics for Ontario (SC, 2018). Specifically, mortality rates for both gender groups are reported to have declined over time as a result of increased access to medicine. This includes the development of general immunization programs, the development of new drugs and vaccines, and increased preventive measures. More significant female mortality may also have been due to cancer therapy — it has been reported that cancer mortality for men fell more sharply than for women, meaning more women were dying of cancer after 1950 (SC, 2018). This is probably due to more sophisticated cancer therapy for women, if relevant.
For the earlier historical period, the patterns found can also be partially or fully supported by documentary evidence. In the first half of the last century, life expectancy for women was higher than for men; the survival graph shows the same pattern for women under age 49. Interestingly, child mortality rates changed periodically during this period, dropping sharply, then rising, and then again beginning in 1915 (O’Neill, 2019). The same dynamic was found in this study, with child mortality changing periodically.
Based on the collected socio-demographic characteristics, it can be concluded that the sample was generally representative. The total number of men and women in the analyzed group was approximately evenly distributed: 54% vs. 46%, respectively. In addition, the sample represented people of different age groups, with the highest distribution being in the middle age groups, which also confirms representativeness (Weiss & Zhang, 2021; Ang, 2021). Finally, among the studied sample participants, a large number of people were in a family relationship, being daughters or sons, wives or husbands. Consequently, the low percentage of single people was characteristic of this sample, so based on the evidence, it can be concluded that the current sample is representative.
References
Ang, C. (2021). Visualizing the world’s population by age group. Visual Capitalist. Web.
O’Neill, A. (2019). Child mortality in Canada, 1830-2020. Statista. Web.
SC. (2018). Changes in causes of death, 1950 to 2012. Statistics Canada. Web.
SC. (2018). Life expectancy, 1920–1922 to 2009–2011. Statistics Canada. Web.
Weiss, D., & Zhang, X. (2020). Multiple sources of aging attitudes: Perceptions of age groups and generations from adolescence to old age across China, Germany, and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 51(6), 407-423.