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17
In the main it is the poorer districts that have the higher
birth-rates, and if economic conditions were such that the distribution
of personal wealth was directly as the distribution of
the true worth of each person to the community, the facts revealed
by our birth-rate would be far from satisfactory. But, of course,
everybody knows that it would be impossible to formulate the
relationship between a man's worldly possessions and his personal
value to the community. And so we must fain, in our ignorance,
be content to rejoice in our improving birth-rate of presumably
desirables.
The increasing birth-rate in Willesden may, however, be due
to the changing distribution of the age and sex of our population.
The method of taking the whole population as the standard in
estimating the birth-rate is very faulty, on account of the varying
age and sex distribution of any given population as compared with
any other. A much more reliable rate would be that in which
the female population at the procreative age period (15 to 45) is
the standard.
At the census year the birth-rate in Willesden was 115 per
1,000 females at the age period 15 to 45. Assuming the proportion
of females at this age period to have remained constant, the
birth-rate for the year now reported on is 116.5 per 1,000 females
at the age period 15 to 45.
This is in excess of the rate for England and Wales estimated
on the same basis.
The Registrar-General, in his 66th Annual Report, has shown
that on this more reliable method the birth-rate of England and
Wales is a rapidly declining one.

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