THE BIRTH RATE.

Evening Star, Issue 20019, 9 November 1928, Page 6

THE BIRTH RATE.

The recently published statistics from the Registrar-General’s Department in Groat Britain show that the birth rate for England and Wales in 1927 was the lowest registered since 1855. Tile actual Jiguro was 054,172, or 16.0 per 1,000. This was oven 1.1 per 1,000 Jess than the abnormally low rate recorded during 1918, the last year of the Great War. Since the year closed, however, the figures have been better. The March quarter of 1928 was higher than for the previous year, and the Juno quarter figures higher again than the March ones, and also than those of the previous June quarter, so that apparently the decline in the birth rate Ims for the time being ceased.

That such a state of affairs should come about is in accordance with the latest scientific opinion. At the last general conference of the British Medical Association much interest was evinced in papers read before the section of medical sociology on the falling birth rate. The point of view now held appears to be that birth rates move in natural cycles of rise and fall; that the steady fall that has caused so much alarm in recent years is only temporary, and may soon cud. Indeed, the figures for 1923 quoted above seem to indicate that a new cycle of increasing population has already set in for Great Britain. This was brought out in the congress by Professor Crew, Director of the Animal Breeding .Research Department of the University of Edinburgh. He saw nothing surprising or ominous in the continued decline. Had the work of Peart and other statistical students of biology been known in the days when the birth rate was rising, the present fall would have been foreseen and accurately predicted. “To the biologist a falling birth rate was nothing but the sign of tho approaching end, not of a people cr a culture, but merely of a population growth cycle. The growth of every living thing, whether it were a unicellular organism or a population, followed the same scientific law.”

The law of population growth, as enunciated by Raymond Peart, showed that a population grows at first slowly, but gradually gains impetus as it proceeds, passing into a stage of rapid growth, which finally reaches its maximum. After this maximum is attained the population increases even more slowly until a stage is reached in which growth ceases altogether. This all takes place largely in relation to the amount of unused or unexpended resources for tho support of a people in a given area. When a birth rate of a population in a limited area remains constantly higher than the death rate,, reduction of the population ensues. This is accomplished by a removal of the surplus in the case of the mouse, rabbit, and other animals through certain epidemics, which, though otherwise they would have faded out, now race through the whole population. But with other animals it has been demonstrated that increased density of population is invariably accompanied by a decrease in fertility and fecundity. This process is, however, relatively gentle and orderly. It seems that the condition incident to overcrowding provokes a reaction on the part of the living organism, which takes the form of a depressed fecundity. In the case of human populations this passive response to environmental discomfort can he replaced by deliberate and conscious control of the reproductive rate. But the cause of tho control coming into operation remains still the working of these environmental conditions. As soon as these improve the end ol the growth cycle will occur, and a now growth cycle with a rising birth rate will commence. We have hero the germ of practically a new theory of population, and future figures to prove or disprove it will be awaited with interest.