WELLESLEY'S BIRTH-RATE 



Reproductivity of College Graduates Far from Adequate Even to Replace Their 



Own Numbers -Importance of the Problem and Suggestions 



for Its Solution. 



RoswELL H. Johnson and Bertha Stitzmann 

 University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. 



NO QUESTION is of greater 

 importance to eugenics than 

 that of the birth-rate among 

 the cugenically superior parts 

 of the population. The junior author 

 has therefore been investigating the 

 reproductivity of Wellesley College grad- 

 uates; some of her data were presented 

 by the senior author in his address on 

 Marriage Selection before the Race 

 Betterment Conference at Battle Creek, 

 Michigan.^ This investigation has now 

 been completed, and the results are 

 summed up in the following table : 



or birth rates, so we have calculated 

 the rate at the end of ten and twenty 

 vears after graduation for each class. 

 The twenty-year period so nearly covers 

 the effectively fertile years of a woman's 

 life that it is more significant than 

 the unlimited rate of the '79-'88 

 classes. The result destroys the de- 

 fense put forward by certain apologists 

 for separate colleges, viz.; that the 

 earlier college women were more profes- 

 sionally inclined, that their marriage 

 rate was abnormally low for this reason, 

 and that with the more varied classes 



WELLESLEY COLLEGE 



Status in fall of 1912 



Per cent, married (graduated 1879-1888) 



Per cent, married in: 



10 years from graduation 



20 years from graduation 



Number of children (mothers graduated 1879-1888) 



Per student 



Per wife 



Graduates i All Students 



55% 



60% 



From a racial standpoint, the sig- 

 nificant marriage rate of any group of 

 women is the percentage that have 

 married before the end of the child- 

 bearing period. Classes graduating 

 later than 1888 arc therefore not 

 included in the first case, in which the 

 status is of reports in the fall of 1912. 

 In compiling this data deceased mem- 

 bers and the few lost from record are 

 of course omitted. 



It is desirable to find any change 

 that may be taking place in the marriage 



of later years, the marriage rate must 

 have risen. Let us hope there has 

 been a change for the better in the 

 uncharted last ten years: but there 

 is nothing in the steady decline of the 

 previous years to give any confident 

 basis for such a hope. 



In the address referred to above, 

 statistics were given showing a lower 

 re])roductivity- of the honor girls (Phi 

 Beta Ka])i)a) resulting i)rincipally from 

 a lower marriage rate. In order to test 

 this further, we give the results of an 



1 Journal of Hkkkdity, V, 3, pp. 102-110, March, 1914. 



* The word reproductivity is used as a cf)nvcnient term to give tlic net result as expressed in 

 numV)cr of children i)er total number of women married or unmarried. 



250 



