Headlines this week claim that heart disease is on the rise among men aged between 35 and 44
Before I get too alarmed about what this says about modern lifestyles I would want to take a closer look at the figures to make sure they are not just reflecting what happened to birth rates 40-odd years ago
Other things being equal, I would expect a 44 year old to have more heart trouble than a 35 year old
So if the 2008 class of “35-44 year olds” consists, relatively, of more 44 year olds & fewer 35 year olds than the comparable group last year, or 2 or 5 years ago, I would expect the rate of heart disease to show a rise, even though the rate for each individual year of age had not changed
Because of what happened to birth rates in the 1960s, I would expect to see exactly this pattern. In England & Wales we went from 811,000 births in 1961 to 876 thousand in 1964, then quickly down to under 800 thousand a year by the end of the decade
Related posts: Nationalising childbirth Doom & gloom on the buses
