todavía no estamos preparados para que se nos confíe una tasa de natalidad en aumento.
[Footnote: It is a digression from the argument of this Paper, but I would like to point out here a very popular misconception about the birth-rate which needs exposure. It is known that the birth-rate is falling in all European countries—a fall which has a very direct relation to a rise in the mean standard of comfort and the average age at marriage—and alarmists foretell a time when nations will be extinguished through this decline. They ascribe it to a certain decay in religious faith, to the advance of science and scepticism, and so forth; it is a part, they say, of a general demoralization. The thing is a popular cant and quite unsupported by facts. The decline in the birth-rate is—so far as England and Wales goes—partly a real decline due to a decline in gross immorality, partly to a real decline due to the later age at which women marry, and partly a statistical decline due to an increased proportion of people too old or too young for child-bearing. Wherever the infant mortality is falling there is an apparent misleading fall in the birth-rate due to the “loading” of the population with children. Here are the sort of figures that are generally given. They are the figures for England and Wales for two typical periods.][Footnote: Es una digresión respecto a la argumentación de este ensayo, pero me gustaría señalar aquí un error muy popular sobre la tasa de natalidad que es necesario desmentir. Se sabe que la tasa de natalidad está descendiendo en todos los países europeos —un descenso que guarda una relación muy directa con el aumento del nivel medio de bienestar y la edad media al contraer matrimonio— y los alarmistas pronostican una época en la que las naciones se extinguirán debido a este declive. Lo atribuyen a cierta decadencia de la fe religiosa, al avance de la ciencia y el escepticismo, y así sucesivamente; forma parte, dicen, de una desmoralización general. Se trata de un tópico popular y carece por completo de fundamento en los hechos. El descenso de la tasa de natalidad es —en lo que atañe a Inglaterra y Gales— en parte un descenso real debido a una disminución de la inmoralidad flagrante, en