THE FALLING BIRTH RATE IN BERLIN AND ENGLAND 
Formerly the fluctuations in the annual birth rate seemed to depend on natural conditions, 
but for the last generation there has been a steady fall which is generally ascribed to © 
artificial conditions. 
that married people are gradually learning how to avoid having children. 
Although its causes are many, the principal one is believed to be 
Up toa certain 
point, this decline in the birth rate was a natural result of the decline in the death rate. 
Otherwise population would probably have increased faster than wealth. But if it goes 
any farther, the results to the race may be serious. 
the earlier diagram we had used the 
death rates for Berlin, high points on 
that curve would have been revealed 
in 1871 and 1890 when the birth rates 
were low. 
As a rule influences which tend to 
increase deaths tend also to decrease 
births, and influences which tend to 
decrease deaths tend to increase births. 
This appears even in the rhythm of 
rach day, Italian figures apparently 
showing that deaths are most frequent 
and births least frequent in the after- 
noon. There is also a yearly as well as 
a daily rhythm traceable in the figures 
but in this case the reciprocal relation- 
ship is between conception as mirrored 
in the births nine months later and 
deaths. There is some evidence that 
during the late spring and early summer 
and again during the late fall the death 
rate is low and the conception rate high. 
There is some evidence, likewise, that 
during the late winter and the late 
summer the death rate is high and 
the conception rate low. This recip- 
rocal relationship between births or 
conceptions and deaths appears also in 
the case of any great social calamity. 
124 
(Fig. 11.) 
As a war or a pestilence raises the death 
rate, so likewise it depresses the birth 
rate, and in estimating the social effect 
of either it is of the first importance to 
consider not only the deaths it has 
caused but also the births it has pre- 
vented. For example, in Massachusetts 
between 1860 and 1864 the death rate 
rose from 18.7 to 22.8, an increase of 
4.1 per 1,000, and the birth rate fell 
from 29.3 to 24.2, a decrease of 5.1 per 
1,000. In Sweden continuous and trust- 
worthy records of births and deaths 
have been maintained without a break 
since 1749, a longer period than in any 
other country. The year 1773 was 
marked by the heaviest death rate of 
this century and _ two-thirds and 
during that year the birth rate was also 
lower than in any year before or since. 
The most universal and fatal epidemic 
which has afflicted civilized countries 
of recent years was probably the first 
of the recent visitations of influenza, 
which spread over Europe and America 
in the winter of 1889-90 and caused in 
New York State about 5,000 deaths. 
Wherever the births were reported and 
published by months one finds, nine 
