CANADIAN BIRTHS DECLINE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31117, 21 July 1966, Page 15

CANADIAN BIRTHS DECLINE

(From

MELVIN SUFRIN.

N.Z.P.A.

Special Correspondent)

TORONTO, July 19. Canada’s population explosion is fizzling and the experts are guessing that birthcontrol pills are one reason. Since 1959, when births reached a 10-year peak at 479,275, the rate has been dropping. The number of babies born in Canada last year was 423,444, 7 per cent below 1964. And in the first four months of 1966 there were 131,259 births, a drop of nearly 10,000 from the 141,819 recorded in the same period of 1965. It is easy for the layman to blame the pill for the decline, but population scientists are not prepared to say how great a factor it is. One difficulty is that censustakers are reluctant to ask | women questions about the

pill because of fear that their interest may be misinterpreted.

In the 1961 census, couples were asked whether they were married; if so, how long; and whether they had children. Some newspapers said the apparently innocent questions were evidence that the census office was conducting a Kin-sey-type inquiry into sexual behaviour of Canadians. “It scared the wits out of the census officials in Ottawa,” says Dr. J. K. Krotki, chief of the demographic analysis and research section of the census division. They feel the public is not ready for the sort of penetrating questions that might be able to determine the reasons for the decline in the birth-rate. One fact that prompts some to think there are important reasons besides the pill for the falling rate is that 45 per cent of Canada’s population is Roman Catholic. Although some Roman

Catholics use birth control pills, it is assumed that the majority adhere to the Church’s ban on contraceptives. In spite of this, the number of births in Quebec, an almost completely Roman Catholic province of 5,000,000, has been falling. The monthly average in 1964 was 10,904. In 1965 it was 10,312 and in the first four months of this year 9792. “One hypothesis now being hotly debated in the United States is extremely well documented but it is so strange that people are reluctant to accept it,” says Dr. Krotki. “It is that young people regulate their propensity to marry and have children by the economic position—not in absolute terms, but in relation to older people.” He explains that the extremely low birth-rate of the 1930 s meant that a relatively small number of people entered the labour force after the Second World War. They

could thus command fairly high salaries. Economically they were better off than older people; and they had more babies. The result was the post-war baby boom. Today those babies have grown up and are flooding into the labour market. Relatively, Dr. Krotki says, they are not as well off in economic terms as older people. And so they are having fewer babies. / At the same time, young married couples today expect greater material benefits than did their parents 20 years ago. “A car, a trip a Europe, a house—they were the luxuries then, but they are almost necessities now.” Perhaps because of this, he says, there are more married women going out to work than ever before. And in order to enable wives to work, the trend may be to have children early in marriage, delay them indefinitely, or not have any at all.