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Mortality, Fertility and Contraceptive Use in Shanghai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Judith Banister
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Extract

Shanghai is the largest city in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Once part of Kiangsu Province, it is now governed as an independent municipality consisting of the city proper and 10 suburban counties annexed to the city in 1958. Shanghai municipality ranks as the world's third most populous metropolitan area, after New York and Tokyo. However, if the rural residents of Shanghai municipality are excluded from the comparison, then Shanghai's urban population of 6 or 7 million ranks it within the 15 largest urban areas of the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 70 , June 1977 , pp. 255 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1977

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References

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31. It would be more appropriate to compare Shanghai's neonatal mortality rates with those for other cities of the world, but data for cities are not compiled very well and are difficult to find. Those cities for which infant mortality data are available, such as Hong Kong, tend to have problems with under-reporting of neonatal deaths. Singapore, however, seems to have relatively complete registration of infant deaths. Singapore had a recorded neonatal mortality rate of 14·4 per thousand and a postneonatal rate of 4·8 per thousand for 1972. I would guess that infant mortality in Shanghai and Singapore for 1972 were almost exactly the same level, except that Shanghai's postneonatal rate was slightly higher. All these infant mortality data are from the United Nations, supra, note 27, pp. 263–78Google Scholar.

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33. For example, for U.S. data see Chase, Helen C. and Byrnes, Mary E., “Trends in ‘Prematurity,’ United States: 1950–67,” United States National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statistics, Series 3, No. 15 (01 1972), p. 26Google Scholar. (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare publication number HSM 72–1030). This weight criterion is a convenient but artificial definition of prematurity which causes some problems in international and inter-racial comparisons. For instance, if Chinese women are on the average shorter than women of other races, they would tend to have smaller full-term babies. Therefore, U.S. babies weighing 2,500gms. at birth might be slightly less physically mature than PRC babies of the same weight, on the average.

34. All data for the First Maternity Institute are from Minkowski, Alexander, “Care of Mother and Child,” in Wegman, Myron E., Lin, Tsung-yi and Purcell, Elizabeth F. (eds.), Public Health in the People's Republic of China (New York: Josiah Macy Jr Foundation, Conference Report, 1973), p. 219Google Scholar.

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39. Guttmacher, Alan F., Pregnancy, Birth and Family Planning (New York: Signet, New American Library, 1973), p. 126Google ScholarPubMed.

40. Lubic, Ruth Watson, “Observations on Maternity Care in the People's Republic of China,” in Report of the Medical Delegation to the People's Republic of China, June 15–July 6, 1973 (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, 1973), p. 127Google Scholar.

41. For example, see Faundes, and Luukkainen, , supra, note 18, p. 167Google Scholar.

42. For statistics on premature births by age of mother, see the following sources: Chase, and Byrnes, , supra, note 33, p. 17–18Google Scholar; Crosse, Mary V., supra, note 38, p. 191Google Scholar; and Babson, Sydney Gorham and Benson, Ralph C., Primer on Prematurity and High-risk Pregnancy (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby, 1966), p. 14Google Scholar.

43. This hospital fatality rate is the number of premature infants who died before leaving the hospital, per thousand premature infants born alive.

44. This “hospital fatality rate” is the number of infant deaths in the hospital per thousand live births. It underestimates the neonatal mortality rate because most infants would go home from the hospital before they were 28 days old. However, the hospital fatality rate is likely to include almost all neonatal deaths of infants born in the hospital, because the vast majority of neonatal deaths occur in the first week of life, during which time the Shanghai babies would still be in the hospital. Also, babies who were doing poorly would tend to remain in the hospital longer than healthy babies, and would be likely to die in the hospital rather than at home.