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.
8/66
![[Reprinted from the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. LXIX, Part I (31st March, 1906).] The Decline of Human Fertility in the United Kingdom and Other Countries as shown by Corrected Birth-Rates. By Arthur Newsholme, M.D., Medical Officer of Health of Brighton, and T. H. C. Stevenson, M.D., Assistant Medical Officer to the Education Committee of the London County Council. [Read before the Royal Statistical Society, 19th December, 1905. Major Patrick George Craigie, C.B., Vice-President, in the Chair.] In dealing with birth statistics, one or other of two objects may be desired : to ascertain the rate of natural increase of a community, or to determine its fertility. The first object is achieved by deducting the crude death-rate from the birth-rate as ordinarily stated. The statistics thus obtained are of great importance as indicating the results of the natural forces at work. But they deal with results only, and if the forces themselves are to be made the subject of inquiry, a re-arrangement of the facts and their statement in different terms from those of the crude birth- and death-rates are necessary. The corrected rate measures a force, the crude rate the result of the operation of this force. Thus in the case of death-rates the inherent tendency to mortality is measured, not by the crude, but by the corrected death-rate, the crude death-rate stating the result of the tendency to death acting upon a population of given age and sex constitution. The Registrar-General’s reports have accustomed us to the distinction for death-rates, and we should not think of using crude death-rates as an index of mortality in this sense. But for birth-rates it is otherwise. The birth-rate as ordinarily stated, which will be referred to henceforward as the crude birth-rate, is still generally employed as the measure of the tendency of a population to increase by natural means, no other measure being in most cases readily available. That such use is often entirely misleading will be abundantly proved by numerous specific instances in the course of this paper. If a clue as to the future and an explanation of past experience is required, a method of stating the birth-rate analogous to that by which corrected death-rates are obtained is necessary. Such a birth-rate should be an accurate measure of the tendency of the community to increase, just as the corrected death-rate forms an accurate statement of its tendency to decrease. In other words, the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22401520_0010.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
