Every thousand births, two hundred turned into deaths before reaching the first year of life in the Granada at the beginning of the century. Infant mortality rate in the province of Granada was one of the highest of Spain in that age, according to the study which has just been published by the University of Granada in the book titled: “The crossing of the population of Granada through the 20th century. From ups and downs to demographic modernization.” The volume, written by Professor Juan López Doblas, has been published in the collection Biblioteca de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología.
Infant mortality was lower in Catalonia, as well as in Teruel, Alicante and Madrid. To the contrary, the highest levels were endured in the northeastern quadrant of the Peninsula (with the maximum in Orense), some provinces of the south (like Granada) and isolated cases such as Segovia or La Rioja, according to Juan López Doblas’s book.
According to Margarita Latiesa, Professor of the University of Granada, author of the prolog to this book and supervisor of the thesis prepared by López Doblas, this text allows to clarify and understand, from the field of Sociology, the keys of this transformation: the development of the birth rate, mortality and marriage statistics, referred to Granada, Andalusia and Spain, at the time as it connects such data with other fields such as economy, policy, education or culture.
Margarita Latiesa Rodríguez, Professor of Statistics, Methods and Social Research Techniques of the University of Granada, says that, however, advanced western society at the beginning of the 21st century is characterized by “very low fecundity rates, the increase of life expectancy for all ages to levels unthinkable in the past, the eradication of infant mortality, lower marriage rates and a delay in the age of marriage, among other characteristics.”
This book reveals that about 1975, the highest infant mortality was suffered in provinces mostly belonging to two big areas of the Peninsula: west and south. “The four Galician provinces had rates higher than the 20 per thousand –says López Doblas— a great part of those of Castile and Leon, some of Castile-La Mancha, the two Extremaduran ones and, at the south, Andalusia (except Seville), and Murcia. The worst situation was in Ávila, with a rate higher than 33 per thousand, together to Palencia and Lugo (about 30 per thousand). Against these deprived areas there were others with a higher demographic modernity and less population suffering: the lowest infant mortality, with rates lower to 17 per thousand, were in the Comunidad Valenciana, Balearics, Madrid, Barcelona, and in the provinces of Zaragoza, Huesca and Cuenca. The population from Huesca has the privilege of the minimum value of the country, 11.81 per thousand”.
However, the data of 1980 stress the strengthening of the attention paid to the infant population in Spain. All the provinces, with the only exception of Soria, had managed to reduce mortality of newborns to a certain extent with regard to the levels of 1975. Some of them, like Salamanca, Segovia, Ávila, Guadalajara, Teruel, Cáceres and Granada managed to reduce their respective rates during this lustrum to the half.
According to the author of the book, Juan López Doblas, “this works talks about the essential changes in the institution of family, the difficulties for the labour consolidation of the young, the delay of the age of marriage, the decrease of the birth rate and its increasing postponement, the improvement of the health conditions, the happy success of the reduction of diseases which were fatal in the past, etc. After having read so mush on this matter and having interpreted innumerable series of empirical data, I have come to the conclusion that my own circumstances more subject to the social dynamic that I thought. It all has changed, although the day by day tried to camouflage it”.
Reference: Prof Juan López Doblas.
Dpt. of Sociology. University of Granada.
Phone number: 958 248065 / 246198.
E-mail: jdoblas@goliat.ugr.es
