The fecundity of graduate marriages, the total number of children born (gross fertility) is a trifle less than that of the average native marriage, rarely above, as in the Princeton class of '76, with 3.2 children: it is 2.55 for the Yale classes 1860-80, 2.4 for Brown '72, 2.07 for Harvard 1872-80, 2 for Bowdoin 1875 and '77 as compared to 2.7 for the native American family of Massachusetts according to the refined statistics of Kuczynski, which show a greater fecundity for the native population than is proved by my studies in St. Louis and those of Dr. Chadwiek in Boston, 2.1 and 1.8 respectively.[1] Even granted so high a fecundity as 2.7 for the average native family, the surviving children under this assumption are only 1.9 to the family; the lower death rate for children of the cultured and well-to-do-10 per cent, in college graduate families against 28.5 per cent, for the lower classes—reverses the relative status when we consider the actual family size; the number of surviving children, the net fertility: this is greater for the graduate family (see Table II.); and it is the surviving children who serve to reproduce the population. 1.9 (1.92 precisely) is the largest possible number for the native population of Massachusetts, as compared to 2.7 for Princeton, 2.28 for Yale, 2.26 for Brown, 1.86 for Harvard 1872-80, 1.88 for Bowdoin.
Table II.[2]
Death Rate in Families of Professional and Laboring Classes.
- ↑ My own data are obtained direct from the mother and will more correctly represent existing conditions than figures like those of Kuczynski secured by additions for possible omissions to state registration records. I must add that they show, on an average, the number of children borne in 10 years of marriage, which should be very near the total.
- ↑ This table does not quite indicate what I wish to show, as the mortality rate compared with that of the graduate family is not the mortality in families of the lower and laboring classes, but in those of the entire population, which includes the educated and professional classes.
