F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 113 
from each marriage was falling steadily and rapidly, and insisted with 
more emphasis than before on the ‘considerable probability of the dis- 
appearance of the natural increase of population—the excess of births over 
deaths—in Great Britain within the present century.’ 
The decade 1901-11 was indecisive ; the ratio of increase was smaller 
than in any of its ten predecessors, but the absolute amount of increase 
just topped that of 1891-1901, and the number of births till 1908 or 1909 
seemed to indicate some recovery of natality. But this was illusory. 
Even before the War the births had got down again to the level of 1876. 
The War sent them tumbling down to about three-quarters of that number, 
and now, after a wild but very short-lived recovery when the Army returned 
from abroad, they seem inclined to settle at the War figure—three-quarters 
of the number attained more than fifty years ago when the total population 
was twenty-six millions instead of forty millions, as it is now. The ratio 
of births, legitimate and illegitimate, to my weighted figure of marriages 
was just over 44 fifty years ago, fell gradually and steadily to 34 before 
the War caused it to collapse. (See the Appendix.) 
It was commonly supposed by many of those to whom percentages 
serve rather to hide than to expose the facts on which they are based, that 
the diminution of births was being counterbalanced by the decline of 
infant mortality. It is true of course that diminution of infant mortality 
mitigates the effect of decline of natality, but the degree in which it can 
do so obviously decreases as the rate of infant mortality falls. When that 
rate is 500 per thousand, as it probably was here in the reign of Queen 
Anne, and may be still in great parts of Africa, a cutting down of births by 
25 per cent. can be counteracted completely by a drop of one-third in 
the infantile mortality rate. But when the infant mortality rate is 
down to 100 per thousand, it would have to fall to nothing at all in order 
to counteract a decline of only 10 per cent. in the number of births. In 
fact, the rate has fallen in England and Wales from about 140 to about 
70 in the fifty years from 1881, and this drop to one-half only balances 
‘ 
2 
about one-fifth of the decline in the number of births. 
$ 
eee 
Though there were eminent dissentients only a few years ago, 
statisticians are now agreed that in the absence of some great and un- 
expected change, the increase of population in England and Wales will 
come to an end at a very early date. Even the lay public has been to 
- some extent enlightened and rather shocked by the recent census announce- 
_ ments that the population of Scotland has actually decreased in the ten 
years, and that of England and Wales has increased only 2,061,000, as 
against 3,543,000 in the ten years from 1901-11, though the emigrants 
have been 324,000 less. 
__ The same change is observable in some degree in other Western 
_ European countries and our own oversea offshoots. The cause of it—birth 
- control—will doubtless in time affect the rest of the world, so that while 
_ we may expect considerable increase—even an increase much more rapid 
a than at present owing to decrease of huge infant mortality—to take place 
- among the more backward peoples for another half-century at least, there 
is no reason whatever for expecting the population of the world to ‘ tread 
close on the heels of subsistence’ in the future, even if it may be 
correctly regarded as having done so in the past. 
1931 I 
