BIBLIOGRAPHIC INPUT SHEET TEMPORARY Patterns of mortality ...

274 Patternsof Mortality in Childhood
Fro. 138. Percentage of Families of Deceased
Children Under 5 Years of Age with Both Parents
Present in the Home, and Parents' Marital Status,
in 14 Projects.
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COMMON.LAW UNION
Common-law union was the marital state
reported in over half the families in two
projects( Chaco Province 52.9 per cent, and
El Salvador 50.6 per cent). In the Kingston-St.
Andrew and El Salvador projects
only a small proportion of the parents were
married (15.9 and 13.9 per cent) and the
mother was the only parent present in a
high proportion of the homes (42.3 and 30.8
per ct.. t, respectively). It is known that in
Kingston-St. Andrew children often live in
the home of grandparents so that the mother
is free to work. .Marino (1970) has described
the relatively unstable forms of
marital unions in Jamaica and other Caribbean
islands.
The percentage of families in which
neither parent was present in the home was
largest in Recife (5.2 per cent). In a few
instances the mother had died and in others
the child lived with grandparents, but many
of those with neither parent present were
adopted children.
These findings on marital relationship of
parents are important for understanding
the analysis of occupation of father and
education of mother. In unstable unions the
father's occupation may not be known and,
moreover, may have little relation to mortality.
OCCUPATION OF FATHER
Exploration of the use of occupation as a
parameter in studying mortality when distribution
of population by occupation
groups is unknown was made in connection
with the Inter-American Investigation of
Mortality in adults (Curiel and Puffer,
1969). In that study data were divided
into three social classes (A, B, and C) according
to the categories listed in the International
Standard Classification of Occupations
of the International Labor Office
(1957). The study demonstrated that the
proportion of deaths from tuberculosis was
higher in Class C (principally unskilled
workers) than in Class A (professional
workers or executives) ; this relationship had
been known in terms of death rates from
the work of Whitney (1934). Thus the use
of proportions instead of death rates proved
satisfactory in that Investigation of Mortality,
and the method has been used again
here.
The distributions of occupations of fathers
of deceased children are given for the
25 areas of the 15 projects in Table 164.
Actually high proportions of the parents