THE DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-Rate.

Ox the 26th of May, 1905, a sub-committee of the Fabian Society was appointed with a curt reference-" to consider birth-rate and infantile mortality statistics"-with a view to investigate certain social phenomena of importance. The investigations of the subcommittee were directed first to the decline in the birth-rate; and as they led to conclusions of interest and importance, an informal interim report was, by direction of the Executive Committee, drawn up by one of its members-the facts and suggestions being put by the author in his own way, upon his sole responsibility-and communicated by him to the Times, whence it was reprinted by the [American] Popular Science Monthly. The sub-committee is continuing its labors, but, for the convenience of members and others, the substance of the informal interim report is now reproduced in more accessible form, without the Fabian Society as a whole being committed to its suggestions.

The phenomenon to be investigated was the decline in the number and proportion to population of the children born in Great Britain. Such a decline had long been an object of desire in certain quarters. "If only the devastating torrent of children could be arrested for a few years," wrote one of the most sympathetic friends of progress, not so very long ago, voicing the opinion of the economists from Malthus to Fawcett, "it would bring untold relief." Not many years have passed, and his aspiration is fulfilled. One of His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, lately revisiting, after some interval, a public elementary school in the centre of London, remarked that, since he was there before, without any alteration in the school regulations, the "babies' class" had ceased to exist. Between 1896 and 1905 the total population of the County of London is estimated to have increased by 300,000 persons. But the total number of children between three and five years of age who were scheduled by the vigilant school-attendance officers positively fell from 179,426 to 174,359. That this scheduling was fairly exhaustive is shown by the fact that

* The report appeared in the Times of the 11th and 18th October, 1906; and in the Popular Science Monthly for December, 1906. Besides many articles and notices in the principal newspapers during October, 1906, it elicited articles, in confirmation or controversy, in the Fortnightly Review (by Montague Crackenthorpe, K.C) and Nineteenth Century (by J. W. Barclay) for December, 1906.

The Service of Man; by J. Cotter Morison, preface, p. xx.

there were almost exactly 5,000 fewer children of that age recorded in the London census of 1901 compared with that of 1891. Nor is this either an isolated or a temporary phenomenon. All over England and Wales the birth-rate is falling steadily, in a decline which has already lasted thirty years, and which shows no sign of slackening. In 1876, to every 100,000 of the population there were born 3,630 babies. In 1904, to every 100,000 of the population there were born only 2,790-absolutely the lowest number on record since birth registration began.*

1. This decline in the birth-rate is not merely the result of an alteration in the ages of the population, or in the number or proportion of married women, or in the ages of these.

It is necessary at the outset to remove one possible explanation. What the Registrar-General gives us is the crude birth-rate-that is to say, the exact proportion of births during the year to the total population, whether old or young, married or single. But in comparing these birth-rates for different years, we have to remember that important changes may take place, even in a single decade, in (a) the proportion between children and adults; (b) the proportion between married and unmarried; and (c) the proportion between married women of the reproductive age and those above that age. These changes-due, it may be, to emigration or immigration, to economic or social developments, or to mere prolongation of the average lifeare sufficient, in themselves, to produce a rise or a fall in the crude birth-rate, without there having been any increase or decrease in human fertility. To give one striking instance, the crude birth-rate of Ireland per 100,000 population fell from 2,384 in 1881 to 2,348 in 1901. But we happen to know that in the course of these twenty years the proportion of married women of reproductive age to the total population so far diminished that the slight fall in the crude birth-rate really represented, not a decline, but a positive increase in fertility. If the Ireland of 1901 had contained a population made up by ages, sexes and marital conditions, in the same proportion as that of 1881, the recorded births in 1901 would have appeared as a birth-rate actually higher by three per cent. than that of 1881. We have, therefore, first to ask what are the corresponding figures for England and Wales, eliminating all the elements of variations of age, of postponement of marriage, and of positive refusal to marry.t

Now, it so happens that this problem has lately been worked out by the statisticians in a way to remove all uncertainty. Dr. Arthur Newsholme and Dr. T. H. C. Stevenson on the one hand, and Mr. G. Udny Yule on the other, have performed the laborious task of "correcting" the crude birth-rates for differences of age, sex and

Sixty-seventh Annual Report of the Registrar-General, 1906, p. xix.

I have restricted myself throughout to legitimate births. The number of illegitimate births in England and Wales is now only 112 per 10,000 of the population, and their omission does not affect the result. Their inclusion would merely have intensified the force of the argument at all points. The corrected illegitimate birth-rate fell between 1861 and 1881 by 21 per cent., and between 1881 and 1901 by 41 per cent. more than twice as fast as the correct legitimate birth-rate.

The results show a definite progressive fall since the 1871 census in the proportion of births, after allowing for all differences in the way the populations are made up. If the people of England and Wales had continued during those fifty years to be exactly of the same ages, and to be exactly in the same proportion married and single, the births per 100,000 of the population would have changed to the following extent: 1861, 3,236; 1871, 3,312; 1881, 3,273; 1891, 3,125; 1901, 2,729. That is to say, if the fertility of the married women of equivalent ages had remained the same in 1901 as it had been in 1871, there would have been born 3,312 babies per 100,000 population, instead of 2,729, or just upon 21 per cent. more, equal in the whole of England and Wales to something like 200,000 more than actually saw the light. Why were those 200,000 babies not born?

2. The decline in the birth-rate is not confined to the towns, nor (so far as England and Wales is concerned, at least) is it appreciably, if any, greater in the towns than it is in the rural districts.

Human fertility may possibly be normally slightly lower in the towns than in the rural districts, and it is sometimes suggested, especially by German authorities, that the fall in the birth-rate is to be accounted for by progressive "urbanization." But English statistics afford no support to this hypothesis. It is true that the corrected birth-rates of the towns of Northampton, Halifax, Burnley and Blackburn fell off between 1881 and 1901 by no less than 32 per cent., and that of London by 16 per cent. But the corrected birthrate of Cornwall fell off by 29 per cent., that of Rutland by 28 per cent., those of Sussex and Devonshire by 26 per cent., and that of Westmoreland by 23 per cent. It is no less significant that, whilst the corrected birth-rate of all Ireland actually rose during these twenty years by three per cent., that of Dublin rose by nine per cent. If it was the unhealthy environment of our great towns that was causing a reduction in the number of births, we might expect to find Liverpool, Salford, Manchester and Glasgow-cities of extensive overcrowding, fearful slums and high mortality-heading the list. As a matter of fact, the corrected birth-rate between 1881 and 1901 fell off proportionately less in these cities than in any other town, and actually less in proportion than in all but six of the counties. A decline in the birth-rate, which does not appear at all in Dublin, appears much less in Liverpool and Manchester, Salford and Glasgow than in Brighton, and appears far more in Westmoreland, Rutland, Devonshire and Cornwall than in any of those towns, can hardly be due to "urbanization."

* "The decline of human fertility in the United Kingdom and other countries as shown by corrected birth-rates," by Arthur Newsholme, M.D., Medical Officer of Health, Brighton, and T. H. C. Stevenson, M.D., Assistant Medical Officer to the Education Committee of the London County Council; "On the changes in the marriage and birth-rates in England and Wales during the past half century; with an inquiry as to their probable causes," by G. Udny Yule, Newmarch Lecturer in Statistics, University College, London. Both these papers will be found in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March, 1906.

3. The decline in the birth-rate is exceptionally marked where the inconvenience of having children is specially felt.

There is not much evidence to be adduced under this head, but what there is is of some significance. It is an error to suppose that the decline is entirely, or even principally, among the wealthy or the middle class. Where married women habitually go to work in factories, and where their earnings form an important element in the weekly income of the family, the interruption caused by maternity is probably most acutely felt. The enforcement by the Factory and Workshops Acts of 1891 and 1901 of four weeks' absence from employment after child-birth comes as an additional objection. Moreover, in the factory districts the later age at which children can now become productive wage-earners has certainly rendered large families less economically desirable than of yore. It is, therefore, of some significance that the ten towns in all England in which the relative fall in the birth-rate between 1881 and 1901 is most startlingly great are Northampton, Halifax, Burnley, Blackburn, Derby, Leicester, Bradford, Oldham, Huddersfield and Bolton-all towns in which an exceptionally large proportion of married women. are engaged in factory work, in textiles, hosiery or boots. I can adduce no statistics of the decline in the birth-rate among the married women teaching in schools; but it is known to be great.

4. The decline in the birth-rate appears to be marked also in places inhabited by the servant-keeping class.

It is significant that Brighton shows a relatively heavy falling off from a birth-rate which was already a low one. But a comparison between various districts of London gives us further indications. Let us take, as a convenient index of relative wealth, the percentage of domestic servants to population. The corrected birth-rate of Bethnal Green-the district of London in which there are fewest nonLondoners and in which fewest of the inhabitants keep domestic servants-fell off, between 1881 and 1901, by 12 per cent. (or exactly as much as that of the North Riding of Yorkshire). But that of Hampstead-where most domestic servants are kept-fell off by no less than 36 per cent., and attained the distinction of reaching the lowest of all the corrected birth-rates that Dr. Newsholme has computed. Second only to Hampstead in this respect come Kensington and Paddington, which have statistically to be taken together, and which, keeping nearly as high a proportion of domestic servants as Hampstead, saw their corrected birth-rates, already lower than that of Hampstead, fall off by 19 per cent., and sink to less than twothirds of that of the Bethnal Green of 1881. It would be interesting to extend this comparison, taking all the districts of London in the order of their average poverty, as shown by such indices as the proportion of the inhabitants who live in one or two-room tenements, by the rateable value per head, and by the percentage keeping domestic servants. But the variations in the registration areas in nearly all these cases prevent accurate comparison of birth-rates between 1881 and 1901. Dr. Newsholme and Dr. Stevenson, on the

one hand, and Mr. Udny Yule, on the other, do, indeed, compare the corrected birth-rates for 1901 of five separate groups of metropolitan boroughs, arranged in grades of average poverty. This comparison gives us the interesting result that the small group of three "rich" boroughs has, per 100,000 population (corrected) 2,004 legitimate births; the four groups comprising nineteen intermediate boroughs have almost identical legitimate birth-rates of between 2,362 to 2,490 per 100,000; whilst the poorest group of seven boroughs has a legitimate birth-rate of no less than 3,078, or 50 per cent. more than that in the "rich" quarters. From these figures it has been inferred that we are, in London at any rate, multiplying most prolifically from our least wealthy stocks. It should, however, be noticed that the group of seven 'poor" boroughs happens to include, not only those containing the greatest numbers of Irish Roman Catholics, but also those in which the great bulk of the Jews are to be found. Practically half the marriages that take place in the registration districts of Whitechapel and Mile End Old Town are solemnized according to the Jewish rite. It is against all the influences of the Jewish religion, tradition and custom to limit the family, and the birth-rate among Jews of all classes and all nationalities is known to be large. We cannot, therefore, infer from these statistics either that the birth-rate of the poorest stratum of the English race in London is greater than that of the artizan or lower middle class. The remarkable evenness of the corrected birth-rate throughout the nineteen "intermediate" metropolitan boroughs, though they vary from having about 15 up to about 45 per cent. of servant-keeping households, is rather an indication to the contrary. This is in accordance with the fact that the decline in the corrected birth-rate appears to be as great in the counties made up preponderatingly of the poorly paid agricultural laborers, as in those districts in which the average level of wages is much higher.*

5. The decline in the birth-rate appears to be much greater in those sections of the population which give proofs of thrift and foresight than among the population at large.

Here we have to leave the carefully corrected birth-rates supplied by Dr. Newsholme, and fall back upon evidence which is statistically less perfect. What would be desirable would be to have precise and "corrected" birth-rates for different years of two sections of the population, the one comprising those who took thought for the morrow and the other comprising those who did not. Such an exact contrast is, of course, unattainable. But it so happens that we do possess, over a term of nearly forty years, the number of children born in one large sample of the population, selected, it might almost be said, solely by the characteristic of thrift. The Hearts of Oak

* The failure to take into account the special aggregation of the Jewish and the Irish population in the districts of greatest poverty, and the limitation of the investigation to London, appear to me to diminish the validity of some of Mr. David Heron's implications in the recent publication, On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status, and on the changes in this relation that have taken place during the last fifty years. 1906. But his calculations point in the same direction as those cited.