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- Title
THE BIRTH-RATE IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1850-90.
- Authors
Crum, F.S.
- Abstract
The article focuses on statistical studies related to the birth-rate in Massachusetts during the 1850-1890 period. For a statistical study of births the exact meaning of birth-rate must first be agreed upon. The birth-rate in its usual sense means the ratio between the number of people living in the middle of a year and the number of births occurring among them in the course of that year. It is ordinarily stated in terms of so many births for each thousand of the total population. But large classes of the population are rendered by youth or age physically incapable of contributing to its births; and other large classes, whose age is no barrier, are unlikely to do so because they have not formed a marriage relation. Hence the total population is an unsatisfactory basis of comparison. The best method would be to divide the births into the two classes of legitimate and illegitimate, and to compare the former with the number of married couples, both members of which were of reproductive age, and the latter with the number of unmarried persons of reproductive age. But the limits of this age among men are more variable and indeterminate than among women. Hence it has become customary to compare the births of each class with the number of married or of unmarried women of reproductive age.
- Subjects
MASSACHUSETTS; BIRTH rate; DEMOGRAPHIC surveys; VITAL statistics; MARITAL status statistics; SOCIAL surveys
- Publication
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1897, Vol 11, Issue 3, p248
- ISSN
0033-5533
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/1882990