Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/183

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26.4, but as the number of surviving offspring is not less, this delayed marriage can not be looked upon as a factor in determining the small size of the graduate family. The cause is not to be sought in education, in so far as the male is concerned. The educated female is in a different class; the fecundity of the female college graduate in this country is lower than that of any other native group, and this low birth rate holds good for her English sister as well, the very small size of her family—smaller than that of the American alumna—standing out in striking contrast with the much higher fecundity of the English people, which is nearly double that of the native-born of the United States.

Family shrinkage seems clearly referable to the strenuous, nerve racking life of the day, to the struggle, not for existence, but for a