The decline of human fertility in the United Kingdom and other countries as shown by corrected birth-rates / by Arthur Newsholme and T.H.C. Stevenson.
- Newsholme, Arthur, 1857-1943.
- Date:
- [1906]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The decline of human fertility in the United Kingdom and other countries as shown by corrected birth-rates / by Arthur Newsholme and T.H.C. Stevenson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![These are corrected birth-rates founded upon all the births of the year as divided into native, foreign, and mixed births in a table in the official registration report for 1903. [The year 1901 was selected in the case of Providence and Rhode Island as being nearer the census date, 1st June, 1900, than 1903, and the foreign and native born sections of the population are assumed to have increased in equal proportions during the intervening year.] Thus in all three cases the foreign is almost double the native birth-rate, the latter being about as low as that of Paris. But this difference, startling as it is, does not adequately represent the contrast between the fertilities of the foreign and native sections. (1) It was thought best to get over the difficulty of births of mixed parentage by adding half of them to the native and half to the foreign births. This, in the light of the preceding statistics, must be regarded as having the effect of somewhat increasing the native and decreasing the foreign true total of births. In some unascertainable proportion a larger number of the resulting births should have been credited to the foreign than to the native population. The number of such mixed births is considerable. (2) It may perhaps be assumed that the whole of the imported excess of fertility is not lost in the first generation, and that the natives born of foreign parentage are more fertile than natives born of native parentage. If this be so, it may well mean that the corrected birth-rates for the latter section of the communities are considerably lower than 16—18, the rates for the whole of the native born, inasmuch as the native born of foreign parentage exceed in number those of native parentage. The chief bearing of these two points is on the relative fertility of the native and foreign populations of these American communities. But it has also to be remembered that the actual contribution of the two sections to the populations is not represented by their fertilities. The proportion of married to total women aged 15—45 varies in Boston, Providence, and Rhode Island from 38-8 to 43-2 per cent, for the native born, and from 56‘o to 58‘2 for the foreign born. The rate of increase of the native born population is therefore less than the corrected birth-rates alone indicate. The crude birth-rate in each of the above three communities is about 15 per 1,000; for the really American element it must, in view of the above considerations, be considerably below this figure. It is almost certain, therefore, that this element is actually decreasing in these populations.' Contrast this condition of thinsrs with that of Paris. This](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22401520_0066.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
