THE CAUSES OF THE DECLINING BIRTH RATE 159 
ties showed a high fecundity for the rural women. ‘In Minne- 
apolis,” says the report just quoted,” the average number of 
children (2.4) borne by the native white American women is but 
two-thirds the average (3.8) borne by the white women of foreign 
parentage. In the rural counties the average is 3.4 for the native 
American women, being again only two-thirds as large as the 
average (5.2) for the women of foreign parentage. Thus the 
average is larger in the rural counties, both for the native Amer- 
ican and the foreign women.” 
In Ohio and Minnesota as in Rhode Island the percentage of 
childless marriages is much greater among the city women, both 
native as well as foreign born. The per cent of childless marriages 
in Cleveland was for native parentage 15.2%; for foreign paren- 
tage, 6.3%; in the rural counties the ratios were 5.7%, and 5.1% 
respectively, in Minnesota the per cent of childless marriages 
was in Minneapolis 12.7 among women of native parentage, and 
6.9 among those of foreign extraction; in the 21 rural counties the 
ratios were 5.1% for native and only 2.7% for foreign women. 
In all states the percentage of childless marriages was greater in 
the second generation of the foreign born than in the first. 
The data furnished by the Immigration Commission therefore 
agree with those from New York and elsewhere in showing that 
the effect of urban life is to depress the birth rate, and that the 
relatively high birth rates of American cities are due mainly to 
their relatively high percentage of inhabitants of foreign extrac- 
tion. The fact that the crude birth rate is frequently higher in 
cities than in the country has given rise to erroneous opinions in 
regard to the actual fecundity of urban populations. Thus 
Bailey remarks in his valuable work, Modern Social Conditions, 
“Tt was formerly the case that cities were ‘man consuming ’, re- 
quiring that their numbers be kept up by immigration from the 
country. As time went on conditions changed, until to-day the 
cities furnish a large proportion of their own increase. At first the 
birth rate in the country was higher than in the cities, but grad- 
ually that in the cities has gained until it has surpassed the 
country rate.” Weber states in his Growth of Cities that we are 
