[Demographic and sociological setup of premature deliveries for live births in GDR 1973 (author's transl)].

A record was taken 1973 of 22,466 single and 3,287 multiple live births, with premature deliveries being subdivided by age, birth order, coverture, and vocational backgrounds of the mothers concerned. The distributions thus established have produced evidence to the effect that all the above factors may have an impact upon premature delivery. Yet, multiple births were found to distort the distributions of all parameters used. --- Reference is made to possible interpretations of such studies in terms of large-scale trends, resources, risk hypotheses, and clusters, with examples being proposed for the latter.