THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE

of a nation. Various circumstances may cause an excess or a defect of persons of reproductive age in a community, and unless we allow for these variations, we cannot estimate whether that community is exercising its reproductive powers in a fairly normal manner. But there is another and still more important consideration always to be borne in mind before we can attach any far-reaching significance even to the corrected birth-rate. We have, that is, to bear in mind that a high or a low birth-rate has no meaning, so far as the growth of a nation is concerned, unless it is considered in relation to the death-rate. The natural increase of a nation is not the result of its birth-rate, but of its birth-rate minus its death-rate. A low birth-rate with a low death-rate (as in Australasia) produces a far greater natural increase than a low birth-rate with a rather high death-rate (as in France), and may even produce as great an increase as a very high birth-rate with a very high death-rate (as in Russia). Many worthy people might have been spared the utterance of foolish and mischievous jeremiads, if, instead of being content with a hasty glance at the crude birth-rate, they had paused to consider this fairly obvious fact.