MARRIAGES IN AUSTRIA

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 73, 18 December 1937, Page 15

MARRIAGES IN AUSTRIA

A Doctor and, die Future '

"Cares of the Future." is the title of an article written uy the director of the largest hospital in Vienna, Dr. Arnold Baumgarten^ in the "Wiener medizienischen Wochenschrift," the most important of the medical journals in the city, in which the writer diseusses the question of the surplus of women In Austria and the comparatively small number of marriages. The doctor states that for every hundred men in Austria there are 108 women, and this figure increasetj greatly in certain places. Thns in Vienna tnere are 121 women to every 100 men, in Graz 116, and in Salzburg 120. The statistics also show that half of the Austrian population is unmarried, and that for each marriage the average number of children is under two. In 1910 ten men had %o maintain eight old persons and fourteen children;

, J A in 1934 the same number pi earning persons had to keep ten old persons and only ten children, and in 1954, it is predicted, the same number of persons will have to keep sixteen old people and only six childreal According to Dr. Baumgartea the surplus of women ov.er men is bound to lead to a catastrophe. The greater this surplus the more difficult it is for many of the women to get married. These unmarried women are compelled to iseek jobs} which constitutes a heavy bnrden on tho labour exchange. The writer suggests that the State should help to increase the number of marriages by encouraging weddings by various means. He also proposes that the State should encourage a higher birth rate, for it is lamentable, he says, that 512,000 women should be the mothers of only 11,000 children.