CENSUS OF BIRTHS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6558, 27 August 1948, Page 5

CENSUS OF BIRTHS

DISCLOSES THAT EDUCATED WOMEN AVOID MATERNITY AMERICAN EXPERIENCE The best-educated women have the fewest children. But the difference is not as great as before the war, writes Charles Molony, pf the Associated Press, from Washington. The United States Census Bureau says it found that out by investigating who has been having all the children that sent America’s population soaring since 1940. The bureau said it also learned that farmers and poor people still have the most children, but city folks and the richer people have been catching up with them. On the matter of education the bueau found that in both 1940 and 1947 the number of children decreased as the amount of schooling went up: College graduates, for example, had fewer children than women who went to college for only a short time. Ana women who went to grammar school for seven or eight years had fewer babies than those who went five or six years.

But in every group, the bureau said women in the child-bearing ages had more children aged five or less in 1947 than their sisters in pre-war 1940. In 1947, it said, the figures were like this: The 1,646,000 college graduates averaged 271 children among 1000 of them; 2,891,000 who had some college work averaged 306; 11,298,000 high school graduates averaged 323; 9,536,000 non-graduates 396: Among the 12,368,000 women with grammar school education only the average was 422 children per 1000 having six or seven years schooling, while those with five or six years averaged 477. The general average was 367 children per 1000. The average number of children for college graduates, however, increased 77 per cent, between 1940 and 1947, far outstripping the rise in motherhood among other groups. The other increases were: some college work 55 per cent., high school graduates 48 per cent., non-graduates 36 per cent., grammar school seven and eight years 24 per cent., and five and six years 18 per cent. Observing that a great proportion of well-educated women remain single (at least till they are older) the bureau added: “It would seem that such factors as the increased income of potential husbands since 1940, and more opportunities for the employment of married women have encouraged more of the well-educated women to marry, and married women to have their children while times are good.”