Deaths

Question 1

Reasons for death rate fluctuations…

Answer 1

• Pandemics
• Natural disasters
• Improved nutrition
  Eg: Although this is contestable, the obesity rate in the UK and US has been steadily on the rise, and there were concerns particularly in the early 2010s about British school meals.
• Access to sanitised infrastructure
  Eg: Africa’s access to clean water
• Access to medical treatment.
  Eg: The Cuban embargo in blocking trade with other countries made getting syringes during the Covid 19 pandemic very difficult.
• Public health measures
  Eg: the clean air policies during the 1950s and today the pressure to return them, with some town centres closing themselves off to roads.

Question 2

What is the effect of a rise in life expectancy?

Answer 2

• Strain on social services
  Eg: The NHS reported that 1/3 of their calls are for over 60s.
• lack of homes to move into because they’re occupied by older people, often alone.
• Greater demand for care/retirement homes. The private sector in more recent decades has in line with government agenda been outsourced.

Question 3

What are some demographical factors that affect the death rates?

Answer 3

• Profession: Industrial workers have famously been more likely to contact preventable illness from their proximity to pollution
• Area you live in
  Eg: Clean air organisations report that those in more disadvantaged areas, because of their proximity to pollution, may die before their middle class counterparts
• Access to private health care in the face of a struggling public NHS.
• Gender: Women are more likely to outlive men.
  Both because of biology and because men typically take higher risk jobs.

Question 4

up to 1970 a decline in the death rate by 3/4 was due to most likely…

Answer 4

The wider spread availability to treat common diseases and illnesses.

• small pox especially was treated through an international initiative proposed by the Soviet Union.

Question 5

It was made illegal to smoke indoors in the year

Answer 5

2007