Fertility rate

“ Birth control Material changes have taken place in the birth-rate of a number of countries during the past fifteen or twenty years which cannot be attributed to purely economic causes. They do not seem to depend on such things as trade, employment and prices; but on the spread of an idea or influence whose tendency must be deplored, that of "birth control," a phrase much heard in these days.
The fact that a decline in human fertility and a falling birth rate are most noticeable in the relatively prosperous countries is a proof that it does not proceed from economic causes ”

“ The physiology of reproduction in man, particularly with reference to human fecundity and fertility.
The progressive decline of the birth-rate in all, or nearly all, civilized countries is an obvious and impressive fact. Equally obvious and much more disturbing is the fact that this decline is differential. Generally it is true that those racial stocks which by common agreement are of high, if not the highest value, to the state or nation, are precisely the ones where the decline in reproduction rate has been most marked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rate, it will be seen, has fallen in all the countries specified, except for a slight increase of 2 % in Ireland and an almost stationary condition in Austria and Spain. The decline in Italy and Norway is small, but in France, where for a long time the fertility of the population has been very much below that of any other European country, the birth-rate thus calculated fell by nearly 20%, the same figure? being approached in Belgium, where however, the fertility of married women is considerably greater. ”

“ Our discussions concerning future birth rate then, seem to point decidedly to the conclusion that since the present high percentage of the middle-age group and the married group is bound to diminish as time passes, and since the fertility of the future generations is not likely to be as high as that of their parents, it will decrease markedly [Pg 119] by the time the present generation passes away. ”

“ If the fertility of the fit could be kept uniformly at its normal rate in a state of nature, the race would have little to fear, for the tendency to further degeneration and consequent extinction amongst the defective would be sufficient to counteract their disposition to a high fertility. But in all civilized nations, the fertility of the fit is rapidly departing from that normal rate, and Mr. Herbert Spencer declares, with the gloomiest pessimism, that the infertility of the best citizens is the physiological result of their intellectual development. ”

“ But it is well known that, wherever statistics are kept, the numbers of births and of deaths rise and fall in nearly parallel lines, so that the net rate of increase hardly alters at all, unless some change, which can easily be traced, occurs in the habits of the people or in the amount of the food supply. In civilised countries the greater care taken of human life, and its consequent prolongation, has reduced the birth-rate, just as in the higher mammals we find a greatly diminished fertility as compared with the lower, and a much higher survival-rate among the offspring born. ”

“ But in a state of society in which all have their higher faculties fully cultivated and fully exercised throughout life, a slight general diminution of fertility would at once arise, and this diminution, added to that caused by the later average period of marriage, would at once bring the rate of increase of population within manageable limits. ”

“ It is therefore shown that under present social conditions the age of marriage necessary to preserve a stationary population will be somewhere between twenty and twenty-nine. The above figures are, however, founded on special cases, and the actual facts are so complicated by the number of childless marriages, the rate of infantile mortality and other causes, that they must be taken only as establishing a law of rather rapid decrease of fertility with each year's addition to the average age of marriage of the mother. ”

“ There seems to be no greater wisdom of choice shown in mature than in early marriages, though this would be best answered by an analysis of divorce records.
That contraceptive measures have come to stay; that they are increasing in use, the declining birth rate absolutely evidences. I take no stock in the belief that education reduces fertility through some biological effect; where it reduces fertility it does so through a knowledge of cause, effect, and prevention. ”

“ The reports on infant mortality published under the direction of the Children's Bureau substantiate for the United States of America the findings of the Galton Laboratory for Great Britain, showing that an abnormally high rate of fertility is usually associated with poverty, filth, disease, feeblemindedness and a high infant mortality rate. It is a commonplace truism that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high infant-mortality rate. No longer is it necessary to dissociate cause and effect, to try to determine whether the high birth rate is the cause of the high infant mortality rate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Global fertility rates are in general decline and this trend is most pronounced in industrialized countries, especially Western Europe, where populations are projected to decline dramatically over the next 50 years. ”

“ Such a long-term view is necessary because attitudes to fertility rarely change rapidly and because, even after fertility starts declining, past increases in population impart a momentum of growth as people reach child-bearing age. ”

“ On the average, the maximum fertility of woman, that is, the maximum of effective fertility, is attained at the age of 18 to 20 years. Extreme youthfulness, and also the opposite condition, too advanced an age, when marriage is entered on, impair a woman’s fertility; whereas the conditions most favourable to fertility are that, at the time of marriage, the uterus should have attained its fullest development, and the ovaries also should be completely mature; this is not usually the case at puberty, but rather at the age of 20, 21, or 22 years. ”

“ The calculation takes no cognizance of infertile relatives, and so its results are unaffected by the detail whether the population is kept stationary by an increased birth-rate of children or other infertiles, accompanied by an increased death-rate among them, or contrariwise. ”

“ And further even when the hour of the union is arranged, nature, to some extent, controls and may modify conditions before conception. Sometimes the fertilization of the egg cell by the sperm cell takes place in the hour of the bodily union of the lovers, sometimes this inner process is delayed by hours or days (see overleaf) . Conception is possible in most women at almost any time during the years of potential motherhood, yet there do appear to be several factors which lead to the potential fertility of a woman varying very much from time to time. ”

“ It would naturally be expected that two women would bear considerably more children than one woman, but as an average fact it appears that a second wife means the addition of only half a child to the minister's family. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the birth-rate in these families is determined more by the desire of the parents (based on economic grounds) than on the natural fecundity of the women. ”

“ All these figures are no safe criterion as to the fertility of mixed marriages, because the usual method applied in calculating the material is fallacious. The way fertility is calculated is to divide the number of births in a given year by the number of marriages contracted during the same year. Only very few of the births during any one year are due to the marriages during that year, but are from couples married within the preceding twenty-five years. If the number of mixed marriages did not increase, such a division would more or less accurately give us the average fecundity. ”

“ In many divisions of the population, and even in entire nationalities, the prevention of pregnancy, not merely in illicit intercourse, but also in married life, has become so general a practice that the fertility of the nation as a whole has been profoundly modified. Thus, in France at the present day, the average number of children per marriage is less than two ”

“ We have seen that the "crude" birth-rate is not an altogether reliable index of the reproductive energy of a nation. Various circumstances may cause an excess or a defect of persons of reproductive age in a community, and unless we allow for these variations, we cannot estimate whether that community is exercising its reproductive powers in a fairly normal manner. ”

“ Factors Contributing to Low Birth-Rate in Desirable Strains.—Most students of the subject believe that the fecundity of much of the best blood in our country has reached such a low ebb as to threaten the whole fabric of our commonwealth. How to correct this is the pressing problem to which no one has found a solution. However much one may deplore it the fact remains that always in the history of the civilized world with the rise of material conditions in any class of a population there has come an accompanying limitation of child-birth. ”

“ The number of children to which during the three decades of her sexual life, from the menarche to the menopause, a woman might theoretically give birth, is never actually born. If we assume that, during the period of active sexual life, a woman requires a period of fifteen months to two years for each pregnancy, parturition, and lactation, a woman could easily during this period have fifteen or sixteen children, and this figure would represent the normal product of the normal fertility of the human female. ”

“ In the first place, it is true that a population might increase in geometrical progression, and that a woman might bear thirty children in her lifetime; but it is wrong to assume that because a thing might happen, it therefore does happen. The population, as a matter of fact, does not increase in geometrical progression, because Nature [5] places her own checks on the birth-rate, and no woman bears all the children she might theoretically bear, apart altogether from artificial birth control. ”

“ In the old days of unlimited fecundity, the early marriage of a beautiful, or intelligent, woman meant a probable perpetuation of her endowments; but at present, when artificial restraint of fertility is so widespread, the result does not follow as a matter of course: and it is evident that the race is little or not at all helped by the early marriage of an attractive woman, if she has too few or no children.
Fecundal selection, then, is becoming the important phase of reproductive selection, in the evolution of civilized races. ”

“ It is said that the dissemination of venereal diseases has caused an increase of sterility; that luxurious living lowers fecundity, and so on. It is impossible to take the time to analyze the many explanations of this sort which have been offered, and which are familiar to the reader; we must content ourselves with saying that evidence of a great many kinds, largely statistical and, in our opinion, reliable, indicates that physiological causes play a minor part in the decrease of the birth-rate. ”

“ We also learn from Emmet’s tables that the mean duration of menstruation and the mean quantity of the flow are larger in fertile than in barren women.
As regards the influence of the age at marriage upon fertility, in women who marry between the ages of 20 and 24 years, sterility is most infrequent; it is commoner in women who marry between the ages of 14 and 20; after the age of 25, the proportion of sterile women increases with each year to which marriage is postponed.
Premature atrophy of the ovaries, with consequent incapacity for ovulation, may occur in a great variety of conditions ”

“ This decreases the number of possible children. These indirect checks held back the increase of population so slightly, evenly and over so long a period as to be hardly perceptible. In the seventies appeared a phenomenon of spectacular novelty—the small family. Harmless methods of contraception had been perfected, the knowledge disseminated, and the means supplied. The birth rate, which had slowly declined through aeons, from eggs by the millions to yearly babies, dropped with dizzying rapidity.
As the birth rates of the nations fall, so fall the death rates. ”

“ It is certainly true that the normal number for a family is but two or three, yet that this is not a question of fertility the high percentage of pregnant women would seem to disprove. [225] The numbers are remarkable in view of the fact that husbands abstain from any intercourse with their wives, not only during pregnancy but also throughout the period of lactation—far more prolonged with them than with Europeans. The result is that two and a half years between each child is the minimum difference of age, and in the majority of cases it is even greater. ”