C URKENT LITERATURE.
ON THE RELATION OF FERTILITY IN MAN TO SOOIAL STATUS.
On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status, By David Heron. "Drapers' Company Research Memoirs." (Dulau and Co. 3s.)—For a long time it has been known vaguely that among the lowest strata of society the birth-rate is exceptionally high. Mr. Heron has investigated the facts of the case by a refined statistical method, and has published some most valuable results. He distinguishes various districts in the Metropolis, and finds the correlation between the number of births per hundred wives and certain indices of social status. The indices chosen are; the proportion of occupied males engaged in professional occupa- tions, the number of female domestic servants per hundred families, the number of general labourers per thousand males, the proportion of the population living more than two in a room, and the number of paupers and of lunatics per thousand of the population. In every ease a low index of prosperity and a high birth-rate are found to go together. Against this result there has to be set the fact that a low index of prosperity is also accompanied by a high rate of infant mortality. Investigation, however, shows that the excess of mortality is not sufficient to balance the excess of births; and the conclusion emerges that "the wives in the districts of least prosperity and culture have the largest families, and the morally and socially lowest classes in the community are those whieli are reproducing themselves with the greatest rapidity" (p. 15). Furthermore, a comparison between the conditions of 1851 and 1901 brings out the startling feet "that the intensity of this relation- ship has almost doubled in the fifty years" (p. 19). Of this state of things a part-cause is, of course, the general postponement of marriage to a later age among the upper classes of society. This, however, is not the whole cause. Rather- " It is apparent from an examination of [one of Mr. Heron's] tables that the differences in mean age of the possibly repro- ductive wives, which accompany various changes in social statue, account for a little less than half the observed relationship betWeett birth-tate and these vatietione in social status. The earlier marria„oes of the lees educated, the less thrifty, the lest prosperous and physically feebler portion of the community have something to do with their higher birth-rate, but they do not account for it to the extent of at least 50 per cent. To stick extent a lesser absolute fertility, a lessened exercise of fertility', or a deliberate restraint of fertility, must exist in the elegies et higher social status to account for the observed facts. Postpone- ment of marriage is not the sole reason why the better element in the community has at present the lower birth-rate." (p. 18.1
There can be no question of the grave significance of these results. As Mr. Heron himself writes, "they indicate distinct sources of national deterioration which the statesman and social reformer must be prepared to consider, and consider quickly."
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