The records of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company show that a remarkable decline has taken place in the mortality of negroes in the last decade.
This company, according to its Statistical Bulletin of New York, has more than 1,000,000 colored policy-holders in its Industrial Department, located in virtually every state of the Union. In 1911, the mortality was 17.5 per 1,000. In 1921, it had declined to 13.2 per 1,000—a drop of 25 per cent. There would have been 7,000 more deaths of colored policy-holders than actually occurred in 1921, if the 1911 death-rate had prevailed in that year. The writer goes on to say that “This marked decline, on analysis, can be tracked to improvements in the death-rates from tuberculosis, pneumonia, heart disease, Bright’s disease, malaria, typhoid fever, and pellagra.
“The improvement in the mortality of negroes is not localized. So far as the experience of the Metropolitan indicates, it represents a very broad movement affecting virtually all areas. Scarcely a state but shows a decided decline.
“As late as 1916 there were 56 local areas where the Company’s colored business showed mortality rates above 17.5 pr 1,000. The record for 1921 shows only 15 such localities. In 1916 there were 30 centers with rates in excess of 19.0 per 1,000. In 1921 no such rate was experienced anywhere. It is noteworthy that the public-health movement which has been so successful with reference to the white population is also making its impress upon the colored. The negro death-rate, however, is still so high as to show glaring deficiencies in the health provision for these people. The facts for the last 10 years show clearly that the death-rate of this race can readily be improved. There is all the more necessity for intensification of the service specially applicable to these people. In this connection, much is promised by the apparent desire of the insurance companies administered by negroes themselves to lead in the development of public-health work and welfare services among their own people.” The condition that is responsible for this bettering showing in the preservation of the life of the negro is the activity of the State for the benefit of the health of its citizens and the increasing spread of education among the negroes.
There is no reason, with all the State is doing—we speak of the State in the abstract and not in the concrete, although few are doing what North Carolina is successfully doing in this regard,--that the negroes should remain in the status of disease. The public health ministers who are being sent out are including all within the scope of their alleviating practice. They are not only curing specific disease, but they are preventing contagion as well as trying to build up more vigorous bodies that will resist the invasions of germs, and the negroes are the beneficiaries of this service as well as the whites.
And then the more extensive educational progress which is so noticeable with the negroes is another factor making for better healthfulness among them. As a man gores more intelligent, he becomes more capable of taking care of himself and prolonging his life through the application of what he learns in the way of disease-prevention. Undoubtedly, this is a great factor toward bringing about a more apparent longevity among the people of the black race, and we are licensed to believe, by what has been accomplished in this regard, that as education becomes more popular and more massive, the race will continue to show improvement in its mortality statistics.
From the editorial page of the Charlotte News, June 11, 1922, Julian S. Miller, editor.
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