Memoranda presented to the Royal Commission.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Population
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoranda presented to the Royal Commission. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/128 page 1
    The Economic Position of the Family MEMORANDUM BY MR. J. HAJNAL and PROFESSOR A. M. HENDERSON 1. The economic position of the family has been considerably affected by the changes of conditions since 1938. Some of these changes may be temporary and our knowledge of their consequences is largely tentative. It is therefore convenient to divide these notes into two parts, the first deal- ing with the pre-war position, for which we have most information, while the second attempts to bring this information up to date. PART I THE ‘PRE-WAR POSITION A.—Unequal Distribution of Child Dependants 2. If people with different numbers of dependants are compared their incomes may be found to be very badly adjusted to their needs. The most important group of non-earning dependants are dependent children. In mid-1944 the population of Great Britain contained 9.9 million children under 15, and 14.2 million men aged 20-64, i-e. about 0.7 children per adult male. There were about 10 million married men between 20-64, so that there was about one child per married man. In fact, however, the children were very unevenly distributed, a large number of them falling on a small number of parents. The children were concentrated in about 5.5 million families (not all of which had an adult male earner). About 7 millions of the 10 million children were in 2.6 million families of 2 or more, Le. an average of 2.7 dependent children per family, and 3.8 million children were in 1.1 million families containing 3 or more children. Roughly one- quarter of the families carried three-quarters of the children. 3. The problem of the economic position of the family is the problem created by this uneven distribution between earners of the burden of provid- ing for children. 4. If we look at the married couples in the country at any one time the majority of them are found to have no dependent children, but most of these either have had dependent children in the past or will have them in the future. 5. This may be seen more clearly by considering the distribution of dependent children by the age of their parents. Table I shows the average number of dependent children per 100 women in various age groups in 1921(*) and 1944. () The 1921 figures are based on the dependency returns of the 1921 Census. The figures for 1944 are from data obtained in connection with applications for widows’ pensions (under the Contributory Pensions Act). If the small section of the population whose high incomes exclude them from this scheme were included, the figures would be ‘slightly lowered. Inj both sets of figures the upper age limit is about 143. 1
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