AS PART of its Monthly Vital Statistics Report, the National Office of Vital Statistics of the U. S. Public Health Service publishes each year an estimate of the most important statistical indices of the previous year. In the March 12, 1957 issue of the Report, Vol. 5, No. 13, Part 1, the annual summary of provisional vital statistics for the year is presented.
Monthly variations for the four major indices, Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Infant Mortality, are shown in Figure 1, [See FIG. 1. in Source Pdf.] which compares the data for 1956 with 1955. It is to be noted that the data are provisional and subject to connection. Previous experience, however, indicates little likelihood of more than very minor changes.
Births in 1956 climbed to another recordbreaking high with registered births reaching 4,168,000, on a rate of 24.9 pen 1,000 population. Addition of an estimate for unregistered births raises the total to 4,220,000, or a rate of 25.2. The birth rate has maintained a consistently high level for more than a decade, having achieved a high point of 26.6 in 1947. As in previous years, highest rates centered in the south, lowest in the northeastern areas of the country.
Deaths in 1956 totaled 1,565,000, a rate of 9.4 per 1,000 population, slightly higher than the rate of 9.3 in 1955 and the low of 9.2 reached in 1954.
Interpersonal influence among public health leaders in the United States Department of Health and Human Services
