The declining birth-rate / Herbert Thurston.

  • Herbert Thurston
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The declining birth-rate / Herbert Thurston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Although this Report of the National Birth-Rate Commission has appeared at a very appropriate moment, and althdugh we find ourselves thoroughly still we must confess that in more than one respect the document is likely to prove a little discouraging to economists who are striving to bring about a higher standard of public morals. We propose to say something later on upon certain aspects of this important subject which have either been ignored or which have failed to elicit any satisfactory pro- nouncement in the Report, but the natural course is to consider first of all the gains acquired, and these are by no means contemptible. It is some- thing to have it put permanently upon record, as the result of eighteen months’ examination of wit nesses, supplemented by the deliberations of those who have a claim to be regarded as experts, that while the birth-rate of the United Kingdom during the last. thirty years has fallen by one-third, that is to say roughly from 36 per thousand inhabitants to 24 per thousand, “(z) this decline is not, to any important extent, due to alterations in the marriage-rate, to a rise of the mean age at marriage, or to other causes diminishing the proportion of married women of fertile age in the population ; “(2) that this decline, though general, has not been uniformly distributed over all sections of the community ; “(3) that on the whole the decline has been more marked in the more prosperous classes.” ? IXven more important is the further conclusion, * Report, p. 3's
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