DECLINE OF BIRTHS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23296, 14 September 1937, Page 17

DECLINE OF BIRTHS

LOSSES IN AUSTRALIA NOT A QUESTION OF MONEY Speaking at the Australasian Medical Congress in the University of Adelaide recently, Professor Harvey Sutton, of New South Wales, said if the birth rate of 1921 had been maintained there would now have been 250,00 C more people in Australia. The calamity of losing 63,000 lives in the Great War was well known he said, but the “ loss ” of the lives of 250,000 since the war because of the fall in the birth rate was not recognised. The decline was not a question of money, as statistics showed that richer people had fewer children. Professor Sutton said that the two most important steps for social progress were the resuscitation of family life and the reconstruction of the home on one hand, and the development of mental hygiene on the other Since the war there had been a veritable landslide in births, and if the present trend persisted the populatior. would cease to increase about 1945. Unless present conditions changed there would be insufficient mothers and children in the next generation, and numbers would decrease. It was becoming hereditary not to have children, and the solution was to discover the family and the home.