SIGNIFICANT BIRTH FIGURES

New Zealand Tablet, 21 January 1915, Page 45

SIGNIFICANT BIRTH FIGURES

From a report of the City Registrar published in a recent bulletin of the New York City De- v partment of Health it is - learned that this city has the lowest birth rate among the large world centres (says the New York Catholicr News). The birth rate of Berlin is reported as 40, that of London as 35, of Brussels as 30, of Paris as 25, and that of New York as 20 a thousand population. One explanation for this alarming difference in the opinion of the Registrar is to be found in the fact that New York is the only city in the world to which an enormous immigration steadily gravitates and in which a very large proportion, of immigrants remain. This constant ' addition to the New York population -naturally diminishes the ratio of births to population, especially as the unmarried predominate: among the immigrants. A phase of the Registrar's report that -will interest Catholics is the following from the ‘ Summary of Number of Births, According to Nationalities ’ : The birth rate among Germans -was 11.61, among French 13.45, among English 17.09, among Irish 26.95, among Italians 78.12, among Austro-Hungarians 45.93 a thousand families'! The New York Sun remarks editorially that these " figures show conclusively that parents of Catholic nationalities furnish the larger increment of population in this city. ‘ The difference: is so large,' says the Sun writer, the average being 49.50 among the Catholic to 14.05 among the Protestant nationalities, that it must prove of the utmost significance to the social and political : economist, especially if the comparative infrequency of divorce among the former class .be considered.’ ,We may add that'the poor fanatics * who are bent on destroying the Catholic Church ought to regard these figures as proof positive that the task they have set for themselves is, even from a human standpoint, an utterly impossible one.