SOME STARTLING STATISTICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 210, 5 September 1899, Page 5

SOME STARTLING STATISTICS.

ABNORMAL INCREASE OF

ILLEGITIMACY.

(By Cable.—Press Association.)

- SYDNEY, this' day. Mr Coghlan, Government statist, has prepared a pamphlet dealing with the question of marriage and child birth. He has arrived at the conclusion that the proportion of fertile marriages is probably becoming smaller in most civilised countries. The average birth rate throughout Australia is now twenty-four to every hundred women, compared with thirty in 1884. Taking1 Australia as a whole, including New Zealand, the fall in the birth rate is as much as 3000 births less than would have occurred under the rate prevailing ten years ago, and couples without, children are twice us numerous as they were in the last generation. The average number of children to each couple has fallen from 5.31 to 4.04. Mr Coghlan also shows that European women in the colonies are more fertile than those who are Australian, born. The families of the latter .average not exceeding 3.5. He points out that one third of the total first-births are due to ante-nuptial conception. He says from New Zedland comes a cry that children are too few to fill the schools, while in Victoria there are less children under ten than thefe ■were in 1891.