GERMAN BIRTH-RATE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19218, 8 July 1924, Page 8

GERMAN BIRTH-RATE.

Judging from vital statistics the idea of birth control would appear, to a limited extent, to have been adopted in Germany, states the Berlin correspondent of the “Springfield Republican," Particularly does this seem to be the case in Berlin and other cities where, for .several years the birth rate has fallen Itelow the death rate, while it is only m the rural and outlying industrial districts that the tendency to bring forth children has returned to anything like normal. The “thoughtless production’’ of children so characteristic of the Germans and other European nations some years ago is gradually disappearing, in the opinion of Prolessor Heinrich Silbergleit, who contends that people living in the cities do not care to have their social activities handicapped by large families. This change has come about gradually. . Where the birth rale in the last, decade of the 19tJv century was as high as 36 to every thousand of population, it has been reduced to 23, or even less, due to various circumstances, and the economic conditions prevailing in Germany since the end of the war. Lectures on hygiene moving pictures and other propaganda designed to teach the benefits of rearing smaller families, avers Professor Silbergleit, liave resulted in an increasing tendency even among the middle classes to restrict the number of children in many cases by one-half. Uncertainty of the food supply, particularly in the' industrial areas, also has had much to do with this change, which is in direct contrast to the ideas prevailing prior to the World War, for then the majority of the German families appeared 10 plan to have as many children as possible. In 1913-14 the average birth rate in Germany was 26 to every thousand of population. Tins added 890,000 babies a year to the Empire. But the rate began to decrease almost as soon as hostilities opened,- and during the war the surplus of deaths, including those killed in battle, over the newly born increased from one in a thousand in 1.915 to 10 in every thousand when the fighting was at its height in 1918. The first year alter the war the birth rate again began to show an increase ,aiid it reached its maximum in 1920 with 26 a. thousand -But the years since have averaged about 25, or Jess, with the cities month by month gradually falling below tins rate, irofessor Silbergleit estimates the population of Germany to-day, minus Upper Silesia •md other territory lost as an outcome of the war, at 63,000,000.