Figure C 55—influence of numerical position of birth on infant mortality and Figure C 56—mortality of the first and later born. Weinberg writes concerning these: "The parallelograms in the first row indicate for each position in order of birth how many children out of every hundred die before the age of 20. On this, however, the difference in the mortality in families with different numbers of children has an influence. To counteract this, it has been calculated how many children in each position would die if within each family the number of children had no influence, and the actual number of deaths expressed as a percentage of the expectation calculated in this way gives parallelograms to the second row. After eliminating the influence exercised by the size of the family, the increase of the mortality with the higher birth number appears considerably smaller. Figure C 56, which compares the mortality of the first and last born children, is to a certain extent a test of this. This shows clearly a considerably higher death rate in the last born. Both figures indicate that children of the same numerical position of birth show a higher mortality, if from tuberculous families."
Mortality of Children According to Sequence of Birth
3,129 Tuberculous and 1,830 Non-Tuberculous Families of Stuttgart, 1873-1889 (after Weinberg).
Figure C 55.
Relative Mortality of the First and Last-born.
3,129 Tuberculous and 1,830 Non-Tuberculous Families of Stuttgart, 1873-1889 (after Weinberg)
Of each 100 living-born there died before reaching their 20th year:
