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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 11 



knowledge than are older and younger persons. 

 However, there is a common tendency to add 1 

 year to the real age. This is because a person who 

 has, for example, passed his twentieth birthday is 

 ia his twenty-first year and wUl think of himself as 

 being 21 years of age. Also, parents are very apt 

 to say that a baby that is between 9 and 12 months 

 of age is 1 year old. Granting the ignorance as to 

 real age that obtains, it is quite natural that the 

 ages that terminate in "0" or "5" should be repre- 

 sented unnaturally in the statistics. It will be 

 observed that with the exception of the age of 

 15 years, all ages termmating in "0" or "5" 

 are better represented than the age on either side. 

 Furthermore, commencing with the age of 35 the 

 "0" and "5" years are superior to the sum of the 

 adjacent years (excepting age 55) ; and obviously 

 the ages of 50, 60, and 70 are the merest approxi- 

 mations. It will be noted that age 41 is represented 

 by only 13 persons, which number is not undercut 

 until age 57. This is explained ia Mexico by an 

 event, during the Dfaz regime, which involved 

 41 homosexuals, and ever since the number 41 

 has been taboo — especially for men. Curiously 

 enough, ages ending in 7 are usually the most 

 poorly represented in any group of 10; e. g., 31-40, 

 51-60, 61-70, and 71-80; and where 7 is not the 

 lowest it is 1 as from 11-20, 21-30, and the 41 ties 

 with 47 in the 41-50 group. Of course, it is ex- 

 pectable that the numbers before and after and 5 

 (9, 1, 4, and 6) would be poorly represented, but 

 the actual situation does not fully conform with 

 that expectancy. From the above it is evident 

 that the following tabulation of distribution of 

 population by age in Quiroga and its ranchos in 

 the 1940 census is merely a general indication of 

 the true condition. In this connection we might 

 mention that on numerous occasions, while work- 

 ing on records in the civU registry, we heard the 

 clerk decide on some arbitrary age for an indi- 

 vidual who was uncertain; e. g., some relative 

 who had come in to make a declaration in con- 

 nection with a birth, marriage, or death. 



In 1940 the population of Quiroga and its 

 ranchos had modal ages of 3 and 8 years (133 per- 

 sons each), a median age of 18 years, a mean or 

 average age of 22.8 years, and a range from newly 

 born to 98 years. Of this population 42.98 percent 

 were under 15 years of age. The 51 persons over 

 70 years would make this almost exactly 43 per- 

 cent. This can be compared with a percentage of 



Age distribution, March. 6, 1940^ 



' We have no record of age for 17 individuals. 



39.3 in 1930 for persons under 15 years of age in 

 all of Mexico. Either figure represents entirely 

 too large a group of dependents. Even allowing 

 for the absent braceros and others who remit money 

 to Quiroga, the proportion of those normally not 

 gainfully or usefully employed is much too large. 

 In part this situation explains the low standard of 

 living that obtains in Quiroga and elsewhere in 

 Mexico. 



