Demographic Research in Britain 1936-1986

Abstract

Any discussion of developments in demographic research in Britain during the last 50 years must begin with an account of the state of the art during the 1930s if the preoccupations of research workers and the availability of resources at the beginning of the period are to be fully understood. For most of the nineteenth century the main focus of interest in population studies was on mortality. This is not surprising, because at that time mortality was regarded as the principal factor which determined the growth of population. Much more information was collected at the registration of a death than at that of a birth or a marriage. William Farr, the creator of our system of vital statistics, was primarily interested in mortality. In Humphreys's edition of Farr's collected writings1, 20 pages are devoted to marriage, 23 to births, and no fewer than 396 to mortality and life tables. Farr and his successors provided Britain with one of the most comprehensive systems of mortality statistics at the time. His studies of the relation between mortality and social factors, and the work of his successors on occupational mortality and on differences between the mortality of different social classes made Britain the leading country for research on this subject. Techniques of mortality measurement and life table construction had been perfected by the end of the nineteenth century, and although improvements in medicine resulted in more accurate statistics of causes of death being collected, the development of mortality during the nineteenth century was reasonably well documented and understood. By contrast, much less was known about marriage or fertility. Between the beginnings of vital registration in 1837, and the Population (Statistics) Act of 1938, practically the only information collected at the registration of a birth was that relating to the rank or occupation of the father. And, whereas in the study of mortality, the modern demographer's armamentarium of techniques, such as standardization and life table methods, was well developed, the analysis of births and fertility tended to be carried on in terms of crude birth rates only, until well into the present century. By the end of the century, however, those concerned with population began to take a much greater interest in fertility. The crude birth rate had begun to fall during the 1870s, and discoveries in the biology of heredity resulted in the emergence of the eugenic movement and a preoccupation with the quality as well as the quantity of the population. In an extremely percipient paper published in 18952, the economist Edwin Cannan pointed out that population growth in England and Wales might well cease during the twentieth century, an abrupt change from the previous century when a continuously increasing population was regarded as being almost a law of nature. Concern about population quality was intensified by disquiet about immigration from Eastern Europe, whose inhabitants were believed to be of inferior genetic quality, by publicity given to the low physical standards of recruits for the Boer war, and by the