Chapter XVIII: Section 2: High Birth-Rate Not the Cause of High Death-Rate: Proved From

STATISTICS

In China, where there is said to be a birth-rate of over 50 per 1,000, and where over 70 per cent. of infants are helped to die, the high death-rate is due clearly to degraded social customs. In the slums of Great Britain the high death-rate is also due to degraded social conditions. It is not due to the birth-rate. Of this the proof is simple, (a) Among the French Canadians, where the average family numbers about nine, this high birth-rate is not associated with a high death-rate, but with the increase of a thrifty, hard-working race. In Ontario the birth-rate went up from 21.10 in 1910 to 24.7 in 1911, and the death-rate _fell_ from 14 to 12.6. (b) Again, in 1911 the corrected birth-rate for Connaught was 45.3 as against a crude rate of 24.7 for England and Wales; and in Connaught, where there is no need for Societies for preventing Parents being Cruel to their Children, the infant mortality rate [27] is very much lower than in England, although the birth-rate is much higher and the poverty much greater. In Bradford, a prosperous English town which pays particular attention to its mothers and children, the infant mortality in 1917 was 132 per 1,000 and the birth-rate 13.2. In Connaught, where there are no maternity centres or other aids to survival, but on the contrary a great dearth of the means of well-being, the infant mortality was only 50, whilst the birth-rate was actually 45! [28] So untrue is it to say that a high death-rate is due to a high birth-rate.