Trends in the Size of Families Completed Prior to 1910 in Various Social Classes

Abstract

A unique approach to the study of trends in fertility prior to 1910 for certain social classes of selected native-white populations is made possible by a special tabulation of samples of the 1910 census data relating to the number of children born to each married woman, the wife's age, and the husband's occupation. These data permit one to obtain the number of children ever born per 100 wives of specific age groups, for married women whose ages in 1910 ranged from forty-five to eighty-five years. The trend in such cumulative birth rates can be said to measure secular changes in fertility only on the assumption that there is no correlation between fertility and length of life after the end of the childbearing period. Evidence on the subject is fragmentary, but it is unlikely that the trends observed could be accounted for by such an association, if it exists, and probable that they reflect actual secular changes in fertility. Analysis of the data leads to the following conclusions: (I) In each social class considered the size of completed families was declining throughout the entire period covered by this study, which is from 1885 to 1910, for the professional, business, and skilled-worker classes of the urban population, and from 1870 to 1910 for the farm-owner class. (2) These changes in the size of completed families must reflect the falling annual birth rates of a still earlier period. (3) Fertility appears to have declined more rapidly in each urban class than among the wives of farm owners, and somewhat more rapidly in the "upper" urban classes than in the "lower." (4) These differences in the rate of decline have brought about increased differences in the fertility of the social classes considered.