1 Children’s health since the 1870s
Before you read on, take 10 minutes to think about your current impressions of the main concerns for young children’s health.
Activity 1 Your main concerns for young children’s health
Make a note of your immediate thoughts on:
- the main physical and mental health challenges facing babies and young children today
- how those challenges may have changed over the years.
You can refer to your notes later to see how your thinking has developed.
The health of babies and young children has changed dramatically over the last 150 to 200 years in the United Kingdom, a high-income country. In 1800, one in three children died before their fifth birthday, yet by 2020 there were just four deaths per 1000 births (O’Neill, 2019, cited at Statista [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ). Much of this progress was made during the twentieth century.
Infectious diseases have been a particular threat to babies and young children. Measles was the most common cause of death among young children aged up to four years in Victorian Britain between 1860 and 1915, and remained in the top four causes of death for children aged four years and under until 1945 (see Table 1 below). It and other infectious diseases were such a threat to children because of their ability to spread among overcrowded populations.
In addition: ‘…poor facilities for nursing care, and the predisposition of poorly nourished small children with existing respiratory disease to severe respiratory complications, probably explain the failure of the measles death-rates to fall in any real degree before 1916’ (Hardy, 1993, cited in Woods and Shelton, 2000, p. 75).
| Ranked causes of death in males aged 1–4 years in 1915 | Ranked causes of death in females aged 1–4 years in 1915 |
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Infections were still the leading cause of death for children between 1915 and 1945 and, for those aged one to four years, infections remained the leading cause until 2005, except for 1975 and 1985 (ONS, 2017). However, there was a dramatic decline in the number of deaths from infectious diseases in the later twentieth century. Once childhood immunisation was introduced in the second half of the twentieth century, poliomyelitis (polio), diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella were all virtually wiped out (ONS, 2017).