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The Trend of Fertility in Prince Edward Island1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Enid Charles
Enid Charles*
Affiliation:
Ottawa
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Extract

Rapid and continuous decline in the size of the human family has been widespread during the last half-century. The main facts are widely known. A brief summary will serve as an introduction to what follows.

In most European countries a period of continuous decline in the birth-rate began about 1870. In France the decline began much earlier, in eastern European countries somewhat later. We find the same picture, varying only in time of origin and tempo, in the United States of America, the British Dominions, Russia, and probably in Japan. A precise measure of the trend in terms of gross and net reproduction rates cannot be given over a long period, but the changes in these measures are available for several countries from 1911 to 1931. The drop in the gross reproduction rate in these twenty years was 50 per cent in Sweden, 38 per cent in Denmark, 37 per cent in England and Wales. In Australia it was 41 per cent between 1912 and 1933. Studies of smaller population units reveal the same trend. Among the counties of England and Wales, the smallest percentage decrease between 1911 and 1931 was 18 per cent. In Scotland a few counties showed smaller percentage decreases, the smallest being 11 per cent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , May 1942 , pp. 213 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1942

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Footnotes

1

This study forms part of a research programme financed by the Carnegie Corporation and sponsored by the Canadian Social Science Research Council. Acknowledgments are due to Dr. R. H. Coats, until recently Dominion Statistician, for facilities provided at the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa; Professor S. A. Cudmore, present Dominion Statistician; to Professor W. Burton Hurd of McMaster University and Mr. A. L. Neal for reading the manuscript and providing helpful criticism; to Miss Grace Lewis and the library staff of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics; to my colleague Mrs. Sylvia Anthony, who collaborated throughout in the preparation of this report; to the friends too numerous to mention who facilitated our work in Prince Edward Island.

References

2 Lorimer, F. and Osborn, F., Dynamics of Population (New York, 1934), p. 360.Google Scholar

3 Tracey, W. R., Fertility of the Population of Canada (Ottawa, 1941, Census Monograph no. 3), p. 83.Google Scholar

4 Charles, E., “The Nuptiality Problem with Special Reference to Canadian Marriage Statistics” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. VII, 08, 1941), p. 456.Google Scholar

5 Warburton, A. B., History of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown, 1923).Google Scholar

6 Charles, E., The Maximal Range of Error in Gross Reproduction Rales (Edinburgh, 1940).Google Scholar

7 Lorimer and Osborn, Dynamics of Population.

8 Hogben, L. (ed.), Political Arithmetic (London, 1938).Google Scholar

9 Charles, “The Nuptiality Problem with Special Reference to Canadian Marriage Statistics.”

10 [Dominion Bureau of Statistics], The Maritime Provinces in Their Relation to the National Economy of Canada (Ottawa, 1934).Google Scholar

11 Ibid.