Early Child Development

The basic facts about the secular decline of infant mortality in Europe have been known for nearly a century. Regristration series show that the levels of infant mortality in the late nineteenth century were still extremely high and could vary quite markedly from one country to another, ranging from about 100 per 1,000 live births in Norway and Sweden to 200 or even 250 per 1,000 in countries such as Germany, Austria and Russia. At the turn of the century, however, infant mortality began to fall almost right across the continent.The countries reviewed in this publication are Sweden, England, France and Austria.

Historical research on breastfeeding patterns, first carried out in the 1960s and early 1970s, was largely spurred by contemporary concerns about the potentially devastating effects of a massive shift from breastmilk to artificial means of infant feeding, especially in developing countries.