on the whole, false. The idea that people as a whole are marrying less than they used to is also, as we have shown, mistaken. The decline in the general birth-rate can be attributed to only one fact, and that is that married people are having fewer children.
The percentage of childless wives in the American stock is steadily increasing. Dr. Crum's figures show the following percentage of childless wives, in the New England genealogies with which he worked:
| 1750-1799 | 1.88 |
|---|---|
| 1800-1849 | 4.07 |
| 1850-1869 | 5.91 |
| 1870-1879 | 8.10 |
J. A. Hill7 found, from the 1910 census figures, that one in eight of the native-born wives is childless, as compared with one in five among the Negroes, one in nineteen among the foreign born. Childlessness of American wives is therefore a considerable, although not a preponderant factor, in this decline of the birth rate.
Dr. Hill further found that from 10 marriages, in various stocks, the following numbers of