PIP: The author examines the use of measures of mortality as indicators of social development. Separate consideration is given to general mortality, infant mortality, and life expectancy. He concludes that the Chilean and Latin American mortality data cannot be analyzed separately from the available social data as a whole, and that the traditional health indicators for the measurement of social development continue to be valid. Comments by Ernesto Medina, Dagmar Raczynski, Juan P. Illanes, and Tarsicio Castaneda are included (pp. 107-14), as well as a reply to these comments by the author (pp. 114-6).