View report page

The rate 25.6 per 1,000 is the lowest yet recorded in Willesden.
It is so low that notwithstanding a material increase in the estimated
population, and a decline in the nett number of deaths for the year
(which not only yields the lowest death rate, but also the smallest
number of actual deaths recorded since the period when the population
was estimated at under 100,000) it reduces the natural increase of
population by excess of births over deaths to a level below that at
which it stood when the population was less by more than twenty
thousand.
Be it for good or ill this decline in fertility is the most
tremendous fact I have to record in connection with the vital statistics
of Willesden. The conservation of life reflected in the low and
declining death rates is more than compensated in its effect on the rate
of natural increase of population by the rapid fall in the birth rate.
I have, in previous reports, shown how birth rates in Willesden
bear roughly an inverse ratio to class rentals, that is to say, that the
highest birth rates are found in the class of persons paying the smallest
rents, and fall to a minimum in the class paying the highest rents.