Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1928. BRITISH BIRTHRATE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 86, 21 January 1928, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1928. BRITISH BIRTHRATE.

The decline in the birthrate, which has been a marked feature of British vital statistics since the beginning- of the present century, has continued until the figures for last year constituted the lowest on record, namely, 16.7 per 1000 of population.. How great the decline is may be judged from the fact that a generation ago the rate was almost thirty per 1000 of the-population. Thirty years before that the rate was about thirty-five. Whereas the birth rate fell five points between 1866 and 1896, it has fallen nearly fourteen points between 1896 and 1927. These last thirtykuie years/witnessed what is practically a reduction by half. Thirty years, however; is too long a period in which to estimate the decline; so swift has been the rate of fall that it is necessary to come to the year 1910 in order correctly to appreciate what is taking place. In 1910 the birthrate was still twenty-five per 1000 —only ten points below the figure of 1867. Thus a rate which had fallen ten points in forty- three years fell subsequently nine points in seventeen years. Discussing the subject recently, "The Times" said editorially: "The most widely accepted" of the explanations, among serious students of the subject, is that which postulates for human fertility an ebb and flow similar to the wellknown ebb and flow of the fertility of many animal species. The human wave, on this showing, began to flow about the end of the eighteenth century—possible evidences of its approach being the great ferments of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the birth of industrialism. For it would seem that a rising! birth rate is accompanied as a; rule by a great liberation of human energy and enthusiasm. But there is another school which sees in an increase of population merely the reflection of an increasing prosperity. According to this school such remarkable outbursts of human passion as the French Revolution have their origin in the increasing wealth of a; large class of the population, which, as it grows richer, resents more and more its political disabilities. The middle class, in short, destroyed feudalism and created the industrial era, and as a consequence of these exertions was in a position to support large families. 'The present-day hardships which have befallen this class are thus necessarily accompanied by a sharp fall in the size of families. So far as England and Wales are concerned, the decline in the birth rate began, not among the sophisticated dwellers in great cities, but amonjr the rural inhabitants of a Welsh recent discovery of very great interest. Nor does it seem probable that "birth control" has played or is playing in the decline of the birth rate anything like the important part popularly ascribed to it. As research continues the conclusion may well become inevitable that mankind today, or at any rate the European peoples, are passing from a period of "exuberant vitality to a period of comparative quiescence. Whether or not the trough of the wave has been reached can only be a matter of conjecture."