Demographic and Social Aspects of Childlessness: Census Data

Abstract

HILDLESSNESS is a topic of interest from many points of view. From the viewpoint of demographers, the person who remains childless throughout the childbearing period leaves behind no permanent addition to the population. If the number of inhabitants is to be maintained, the people who have children must make up for those who have no progeny. Eugenicists are concerned with the possible effect of differential fertility on the quality of the future population-and childlessness is one of the factors involved. Clinicians and physicians who are called upon to offer advice and medical aid to people of limited fecundity have a strong interest in the number and description of persons who are childless. Public health officials are concerned about childlessness for many reasons, including the high incidence of sterility from venereal disease among certain population groups. Housing needs and other consumer requirements are affected by the extent to which people do or do not have children. Changes in the timing of first births and in the amount of childlessness may cause important fluctuations in birth rates over a period of years. Data on voluntary or involuntary childlessness are sometimes presented as one aspect of comprehensive demographic investigations. For example, the well-known Indianapolis Study of Social and Psychological Factors Affecting Fertility found in 1941 that among native white Protestant couples who had been married 12 to 14 years and who had completed at least the eighth grade of school, 19 per cent had never had a live-born child and 9 to 13 per cent of the couples were classified as involun-