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Was anyone else surprised to see death by accidents drop? I assumed as health-related concerns went down, the accidents ratio would go up?

Then again, I don't see "war" in the list so if casualties of war are grouped under accidents...

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Going by wikipedia stats (us population of 131 million, 420000 wwii deaths), and assuming 3 years for heavy US troop involvement in the war (say mid-1942 to mid-1945), it looks like war would have accounted for about 107 deaths per 100,000 people for those years.

Accidental deaths are also increasing, ironically, due to the increase in "healthy" activities like bicycling

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-californa-lea...

And compare the accident rate on stair falls vs. injuries in elevators. Then think about it next time your workplace "healthy living" person nags you to take the stairs.

It's hard to explain just how profound safety culture is now. SFAIIK, it started with the IBEW ( 50% fatality in lineman early on... ) and propagated through all industries.

WWII "only" killed 4% of the population, with the Soviet Union bearing the brunt on the Allied side.

I have read and re read the article (albit on mobile) and can't see the '4%' figure anywhere. Where is it from? The Wikipedia article on Second World War casualties lists US deaths at .32% of population. As you noted, the USSR had it very rough, with figures quoted as high as 14.2% of the population killed. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

As incredible as it might be to believe, the figures are a whole lot uncertain.

I've used 4% for long enough that I don't precisely remember how I arrived at it. I probably picked it from the middle of the range. I believe the lower bound is known to be pretty certainly 2.5% of global population. Or it was probably used by some source I've since forgotten.

Figures for China are very uncertain.

"*World-wide casualty estimates vary widely in several sources. The number of civilian deaths in China alone might well be more than 50,000,000."

http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-student...

The uncertainty is kind of astonishing.

Occupational safety wasn't a very big concern in 1900.

Definitely. Factory machinery without belt or blade guards. Horse-related injuries. What cars there were had no seat belts or safety glass. Lots of super-toxic patent medicines. Flotation devices for small boats almost unheard of. Baseball without batting helmets. Lots more.

I'm wondering if this dataset exclusively covers the US, and if so, how much of any decrease in occupational accidents can be attributed to the loss in manufacturing jobs to overseas. Whether that represents progress is a matter of perspective.

If you click through you can look at the numbers:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569

(hover over the line graph)

The non vehicle accident death rate in 1900 was around 80, in 1950 around 40 and around 20 between 1980 and 2000.

So half of the decline was before manufacturing really hit it's stride in the US, and the decline slackened off as capacity really started moving overseas.

>> I'm wondering if this dataset exclusively covers the US<< The opening says "The New England Journal of Medicine takes a look at the leading causes of death in the U.S. from 1900 to 2010."

We live and learn!

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