The past 25 years have brought dramatic improvements in mortality rates in Great Britain. Infant mortality is now about 40% of what it was a quarter of a century ago: death-rates for children have been reduced to less than 1 per 1000. Not only children have benefited; young adults in the 15–44 age-group experience mortality little more than a third of what it was in the early thirties, whilst women aged 45–64 have had an improvement of about 40%.

It is therefore regrettable that the experience of men aged 45–64 is a black spot in the general picture. The improvement for men in this age-group has not kept pace with that for women of the same age, being only about 15% in 25 years, little more than ½% a year. Table 1 compares the death-rates for men and women in post-war years and demonstrates very clearly how over a period of 12 years the ratio of male to female mortality has steadily increased.