Were Mother, Tateh, and the kids the only ones who "deserved" to survive the book?
The short answer is obviously no. For a longer answer, Mother, Tateh, and the kids weren't the only ones who "deserved" to survive because not only do I not think I'm in a position to be handing out death sentences, but also even in a literary context there are other characters who didn't do anything wrong enough to be justified in being killed off. The first one of these characters is Sarah, who I don't think anyone could make an argument for why she could possibly have deserved to die, except maybe the fact that she almost killed her baby by burying it alive, but we don't know that it was her that did that. Maybe someone stole her baby and buried it, and even if it was her, she doesn't do anything after her introduction to us that would warrant a literary death. Even the way she eventually dies is really unfair to her, since she was just trying to help Coalhouse in the biggest way she thought she could and ended up being mistaken for...