Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/187

Rh to the married couple is the same; to this the Harvard graduate is an exception; with both family size and marriage rate lower than the graduate average and lower than that of the native-born male of Massachusetts (of a comparable age group-40-49 years), reproduction per class is naturally less. A Princeton class, if we may take '76 as an example, more than reproduces itself: it reproduces not alone the married couple, 2.7 surviving children to each, but more than reproduces the entire class, 3.3 to each class member, married and unmarried (2.3-net class reproduction). Brown just reproduces itself with 2.26 living children to the married graduates and precisely 2 to each member of the class.

All classes later than 1870 of other institutions so far considered fail to reproduce themselves, most so Harvard alumni. Yale graduates very nearly reproduce themselves with 2.28 surviving children to the married graduate and a net class reproduction of 1.78 (i. e., for each member of the class). Next comes the single Yale class of '73 with a class reproduction of 1.57 children. The two Bowdoin classes 1875 and '77 are represented by 1.5 and the 9 Harvard classes 1872-80 by 1.3 children for each graduate, married and unmarried (1872-77 by 1.4 and 1878-80 by 1.19 respectively).

A great decrease has indeed taken place in the birth rate of graduate families, but not quite to the same extent as among other groups of the same social grade: the wealthy or leisure class, the well-to -do invariably do less towards reproducing themselves than does the population at large; the college graduate, the highly educated male, does more.

This table is arranged according to rate of reproduction.