Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/518

514 definite progressive fall 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 birth rate 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 birth rate 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 Westmorland 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 3 per cent., that of Dublin rose by 9 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 Westmorland, Rutland, Devonshire and Cornwall than in any of those towns, can hardly be due to 'urbanization.'