Dr. W. Ogle read a paper before the Statistical Society
on Tuesday on "Marriage Rates and Ages," which contained some interesting facts. He denied that the rate of marriage increased with declines in the price of food, the exact contrary being the case. Marriages increase with dear food, because they
increase with activity of trade, and of the- exports necessary to pay for imported grain. The rate is decreasing, but in nothing like the proportion necessary to make population stationary. The mean age of marriage has, however, steadily risen since 1873, and is now 26.3 for men, and 24.7 for women. In the professional and independent classes it is, moreover, much higher, the average age of brides in those classes being as high £ 1. 9 26-i. To equalise the death-rate with the birth- rate, however, either emigration must increase till it involves a social revolution, or the marriage age of women must advance to thirty, or 45 per cent. of the people who now marry must remain celibate. Dr. Ogle, therefore, sees little hope ; but he forgets, as everybody else does, the possible operation of those inexplicable laws which have occasionally checked population. The Jews, who are the healthiest of people, have not filled the world, as they would have done at the present Anglo-Saxon rate of increase, and our own population remained nearly stationary for centuries.
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