vital rates, relative frequencies of vital occurrences that affect changes in the size and composition of a population. When calculated per 1,000 inhabitants—as is conventional in vital-statistics publications—they are referred to as crude rates. More refined rates often must be used in the more meaningful analysis of population change.

Principal among vital rates are the crude birth rate and the crude death rate; i.e., annual numbers of births or of deaths per 1,000 population, based on the midyear population estimate. The difference between these two rates is the rate of natural increase (or decrease, if deaths exceed births). Rates of natural increase are a net result of fertility trends, health conditions, and variations in the age composition of the population. They approximate rates of population growth, a result of natural increase and the balance of migration (immigrants minus emigrants), when the latter is comparatively small.

The marriage rate records the annual number of marriages per 1,000 inhabitants. It is a crude measure, since, aside from the effects of age composition and preferred ages at marriage, it also is influenced by remarriages of previously widowed or divorced persons. More importantly, it does not include marriage unions that are not legally formalized, and there are differences in the definition of legal marriage. Some countries, for example, recognize common-law marriages as legal, while others do not; and in some Latin-American countries, marriages performed under indigenous tribal rites are not recorded as legal. Divorce rates and the infant mortality rate complete the set of most widely published vital rates. The infant mortality rate is calculated as the number of infant deaths (deaths of children under 12 months of age) occurring in a given year per 1,000 live births occurring in the same year.

These vital rates are widely used and facilitate much useful comparison of time trends and of local variations within or among countries. Being summary measures, they do not reveal many factors that may have a distorting effect for purposes of more specialized comparison. Chief among these factors is the variable age composition of the population. Thus, the crude birth rates are somewhat distorted measures of reproductivity, because the percentage of total population at reproductive ages is not taken into account. The crude death rates distort the comparison of mortality conditions to an even greater extent. Even under the best health conditions, mortality is at least relatively high at advanced ages; therefore, the proportion of aged persons in the population—e.g., those aged 65 and over—has a large effect. See also mortality.