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1916 there was, however, a flight increase, the figure being 27,291 as compared with 27,095 in the
corresponding quarter of 1915.
The Notification of Births Act, 1907, is adoptive in character, but was put into operation throughout
the whole of the County in 1909 by an order of the Local Government Board made under Section 5
of the Act. By Section 2 (5), the Council receives from the medical officers of health of the City and
the metropolitan boroughs particulars of the births within their several districts. The total number of
births thus notified during the year was 98,758, of which 2,108 were twins, 48 were triplets, and 2,246
were stillbirths. After correction for institutions the total number of births was 98,265, of which 2,228
were stillborn. The corrected number of births registered during the year was 101,649, an excess of
5,612 over the number notified.
The Notification of Births (Extension) Act, 1915, empowers local authorities (in London, the
City Corporation and the councils of the metropolitan boroughs) to exercise any power which a sanitary
authority has under the Public Health Acts, 1875 to 1907, or the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, for
the purpose of the care of expectant mothers, nursing mothers and young children.
Much has been written concerning the steady fall in the birth-rate which has now been practically
continuous for the last 40 years. A theory which has met with some acceptance ascribes it not
to natural causes such as the higher age of marriage, economic factors, migration, etc., but to a change
in the " moral tone " of the community, and to the artificial limitation of families. One of the most
cogent arguments against this is the fact that the fall is widespread throughout Europe and affects
certain other cvilised communities. As Mr. Udny Yule has observed:—"It was precisely the extraordinary
similarity of the changes in very widely different countries that made it very difficult for him to
accept the purely moral theory. If there had been a change in that way—and possibly it was the case—
why did this change take place in so many different countries in almost the same year? People did not
change their morality in a large number of different countries, or even in one country, at a given point
of time without some extremely definite cause, and ... he was still inclined to regard economic factors
of some kind as lying behind it."
On the other hand, in a paper read by Dr. Dunlop on the "Fertility of Marriage in Scotland,"
a table is given which appears to indicate that the fertility of marriage has been decreasing; the average
complete fertility of wives married at 20, previous to 1864, was 8.48; in the quinquennium 1865-69
this fell to 8.42; in the period 1870-74 to 8.04; in 1875-79 to 7.88; in 1880-84 to 7.59; and similar
results are shown for each year of age in the table. Various criticisms of these figures have, however,
been published, and Dr. Dunlop has examined some of them in a further paper. Dr. Snow has pointed
out a serious source of fallacy, inasmuch as the mortality of parents with large families is less than
that of parents with small families, and from this it would follow that the figures stated exaggerate
the fertility of the marriages occurring before 1880 in comparison with the later ones, owing to the fact
that the small families derived from the earlier marriages are not represented in the proper proportion
among the surviving parents in 1911. A further point of criticism is that the results are based on data
which must, to some extent, be considered as selective, owing to the fact that a considerable proportion
of the Scotch population has emigrated (217,418 in 1881-91, and 53,356 and 254,042 in the two following
decennia). The opposite influence, exerted by immigration upon a birth-rate, is, it may be observed,
strikingly exhibited in Australia. As Sir T. Coghlan says:—"There can be no question but that the
women who came to Australia between 1850-1870 w ere of a type likely to be prolific in children," and
again he speaks of the women, who came "in the gold digging days and the two following decades,"
as being " as a class, above the ordinary fertility of the time." The high birth-rate following upon this
immigration and the decline following upon its cessation probably thus in large part find explanation.
This view is confirmed by Mr. W. McLean, who has pointed out that the high birth rates of 1871-81 in
older women must be attributed to the fact that many of these women came to Australia during the
" immigration period " of 1851-61 and thus belonged to a " physically selected class."
The effect of postponement of marriage has hitherto been considered mainly from the point of
view of its relation to the duration of marriage, and insufficient allowance has been made for what might
be termed the physiological effect. Sir T. Coghlan quotes figures demonstrating "the incorrectness of
the popular assumption that the fertility of women marrying at immature ages soon becomes exhausted,"
and, further, cites figures showing " that the reproductive system, if unused, is apt to become
inoperative." Drs. Newsholme and Stevenson have referred to certain Budapest figures, which give
different results, but it is at any rate clear that the physiological reasons for assuming that postponement
of marriage markedly affects fertility are supported by the figures from New South Wales. If,
as seems probable on physiological grounds, a woman's reproductive power may be represented by a
curve which rises from zero at about age 15 to a maximum somewhere between ages 20 and 30, and
then gradually approaches zero again in the region of age 45, and if this curve undergoes modification
with the varying ages at which marriage takes place, it would appear that any conclusions which do not
take account of this physiological side of the problem must be accepted with reserve.
Mr. Udny Yule, in his paper of 1906, examined various economic factors, wages, consumption
of commodities, exports and imports, and was led to attach special significance to the correlation of
the marriage and birth rates with the course of prices. The correspondence between Sauerbeck's index
numbers of prices, and the marriage and birth curves is a striking one, and Mr. Yule concludes:—"I
feel myself almost compelled to the belief that the course of prices, either directly by its influence on
consuming power and on profits, indirectly by effects on trade, or more indirectly (if it be possible) as
an index to the course of some other variable, has been, through the past century, the factor of most
outstanding importance in the rate of reproduction of the race."
32681 A2
The decline
in the birth
rate.