Vital Statistics During the War *

The most essential commodity for the prosecution of the war was people-people to fight the war, people to produce war material, and people to whom critical material had to be diverted for the production of essential civilian goods. Thus, it was important to have current knowledge, and in many cases a future picture, of the population, its composition and distribution as well as the forces affecting it. In a global war, it was essential that this knowledge also include the demographic situation of the enemy with respect to such factors as the population potential available for military and war production purposes, or the epidemiological problems for use in invasion planning. It may be safely stated that more vital statistics were compiled by more agencies for more purposes during the war years than ever before. One of the special wartime applications of vital statistics data in the United States was the use of birth and death figures in shaping plans for the allocation of critical materials to manufacturers, and for the distribution of consumer goods to the civilian population. For example, the number of births and deaths was used to estimate future hospital needs and supplies; the number of births to estimate civilian requirements for infants' clothing, canned baby foods, -evaporated milk, diapers, baby carriages, cribs, etc. Similarly, statistical data on deaths were used to determine allocation of lumber and metals to casket manufacturers, to estimate the number of cases of certain diseases requiring treatment with drugs or antibiotics on the critical materials list, to compute the number of ration books outstanding, etc. Numerous other wartime applications of vital statistics data were made in connection with medical care, planning for expansion of classroom facilities, in estimating available manpower, estimating the volume of dependency in soldiers' families, estimating acquisitions and losses among dependents of the armed forces, etc.