THE MODERN BIRTH RATE

Evening Star, Issue 19789, 13 February 1928, Page 8

THE MODERN BIRTH RATE

OEAH INGE’S VIEWS

I Dean Inge, in the ‘Evening Stan- - 3ard,’ explains what, in his opinion, .the modern birth rate means, in the course of an interesting article in that newspaper he gives the iollowing facts pud figures:— For some reason which has not been adequately explained, the fecundity of .the white man began suddenly to decline nearly all over Europe, between 1875 an! 1878. 1 know of no stronger proof of the solidarity of our civilisation, nor of.the obscurity of the_ causes which produce great changes in it. The facts, recently collcetedhy H. W. Methorst, are as -follows ;—in_ Holland the birth curve rises till 1876, and then falls. In Belgium also the fall begins jitter 1876. In Germany the same year marks the turning point. In England and Wales the change begins one year later. In Sweden the regular decline ■ begins in 1876, in Denmark in 1884. I la’ltaly the decline began in 1863, bid [has been much slower (from 43 in 1863 !to2B in 1926). In France, when dur--1 mg the war the birth rate dropped to | 9, there has been no further decline i since 1921; the rate in is now I higher than in Switzerland, England, ; Sweden, and Saxony. Only in Japan ! are the figures entirely different; the i birth rate there is rising, f The common belief that Homan Catho- * lie countries multiply more rapidly than Protestant is hardly borne out by statistics. The excess of births over deaths is greatest in the Slav countries. Out of 55 countries enumerated in order of their net increase, the Catholic countries hold the following places;—l2, ■Uruguay; 14, Poland; 26, Italy; 35, Portugal; 38, Spain; 44, Venezuela; 45, Chile; 47, Belgium; 61. Irish Free State (figures deceptive owing to emigration of young couples); 52, Austria; , 56, France. In England and Wales the birth rate culminated at 36 in 1877; in 1924 it was 18.8; in 1925, 18.3; in 1926, 17.8; in the first nine months of tho present year, 17.2. This means that an equilibrium has already been reached on the basis of a stationary population, though for several years to come (till about 1941, by a rough calculation of my own) the births will exceed the deaths because the present age distribution of the population makes the crude death rate much below the real expectation of life at birth. I was interested to hear that when the Government consulted its experts as to how long it would be necessary to go on providing additional houses for an increasing population, the experts predicted that tho increase will stop in or about 1941. I do not know how they arrived at this calculation, which corresponds with my oW When machinery displaces manual labor even more than it docs at present, the mere human ox will lose his survival value; the nations in the future will not need much unskilled labor* This tendency to substitute machines for men, and the growing eon-

viction that each nation ought, for its own safety, to be self-supporting leads mo to think that-after tho middle of the. century our numbers will have begun to go” down. It is much to bo wished that tho surplus population would emigrate and make our dominions securely English for all time; but the seductions of tho dole are too potent. Democracy fosters parasites, not pioneers.