The Significance of the Decreasing Proportion of Children

Abstract

The period during which population and vital statistics of civilized nations have been available has been too brief to measure the relationship which doubtless exists between the material condition of a nation and increase or decrease of population. Each nation of Europe offers to the student a substantially accurate record of events for more than a thousand years, but statistics of population, even moderately correct, exist but for a century at best, and in some nations for a much shorter period. In the United States alone will it be possible in succeeding years to trace such relation as exists between the growth and prosperity of the republic arid the increase or decrease of population. The beginning of census taking was practically coincident with the establishment of the Federal Government, and should a periodic count of inhabitants continue, as it doubtless will so long as the republic endures, ours will prove to be the only important nation now in existence in which an accurate periodic count of inhabitants has been maintained throughout its entire history. After the lapse of i IO years of census taking in the United States (from 1790 to I900) certain well-defined facts have already appeared that are of consequence, since they may indicate influences at work within the social structure of the nation. It is a wellknown fact that in the face of generous additions due to immigration the percentage of increase in the aggregate population has steadily diminished; obviously some element of the population has decreased its contribution of births so decidedly as to affect the percentage of total increase though aided by immigration. The returns of the census and the private investigations of leading American statisticians have for many years pointed to the original population element in the United States as the one in which decrease is most pronounced. There is reason to believe that the diminution in the birth rate in this large segment of the population of the