The Theory of Change and Response in Modern Demographic History

Source: Population Index, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 1963), pp. 345-366
Published by: Office of Population Research
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 345

CURRENT ITEMS

THE THEORY OF CHANGE AND The process of demographic change

RESPONSE IN MODERN and response is not only continuous
DEMOGRAPHIC HISTORY but also reflexive and behavioral-
reflexive in the sense that a change
in one component is eventually altered by the change it has induced in
other components; behavioral in the sense that the process involves hu-
man decisions in the pursuit of goals with varying means and conditions.
As a consequence, the subject has a frightening complexity-so much so
that the temptation is great to escape from its intricacies. One method
of escape is to eschew any comprehensive theory, simply describing
computations or working on a single hypothesis at a time. Another is to
adopt some convenient oversimplification, such as the assumption that
population is simply a matter of two capacities-a "reproductive urge"
on the one side and 'means of subsistence" on the other-or, at an oppo-
site extreme, that demographic behavior is a function of a 'traditional
culture' or 'value system."

My purpose here is to try to encompass some of the complexities in

an overall analysis of demographic change in the industrialized countries.
To do this, I prefer to start with Japan. Not only does Japan, the sole
fully industrialized non-Western country, furnish a perspective that no
other country can furnish, but some phases of its population change are
statistically better documented.

Abortion as a Demographic Response

The phenomenon most discussed-and one commonly regarded as pe-

culiarly Japanese--is the rapid rise of the registered abortion rate from
11.8 per 1000 women aged 15-49 in 1949 to a peak of 50.2 per 1000 in
1955,/1 although at the latter date the registration of abortions is esti-
mated to have been only 50 to 75 per cent complete./2 The resort to
abortion has been the leading cause of probably the fastest drop in the
birth rate ever exhibited by an entire nation, births per 1000 women aged
10-49 falling by 41 per cent between 1950 and 1957. Westerners profess
to be astonished by this phenomenon, but they should not be. The be-
havior of the Japanese is essentially the same in kind as the behavior of
West Europeans at a similar time in their social and demographic his-
tory. The main difference is that Japanese tolerance permits the abor-
tion rate to be reasonably well known, whereas in the past of Europe the
abortion rate has never been known and, for this reason, is usually ig-
nored in population theory.

Yet there is indirect and approximate evidence that in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries in Western Europe abortion played a
great role. David Glass, who in 1940 summarized the findings for eight

Editor's Note.-This is the text of the address delivered by Kingsley

Davis, International Population and Urban Research, University of Cali-
fornia, President of the Population Association, at the banquet on the
evening of April 26, 1963, at Philadelphia, as part of the annual meeting
of the Association.

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346

northwest European countries, cited the records of women under a Ger-

man sickness benefit fund which show a gradual climb in abortions from
38 per 100 births in 1908 to 113 per 100 in 1932./3 In Belgium "there
were many books explaining how to induce abortion and any woman could
buy, for 60 centimes, a uterine syringe and use this to induce an abor-
tion."/4 In both France and Germany advertisements by abortionists
were freely published. In fact, one gets the impression that the attitude
toward abortion in West European society was much less intolerant be-
tween 1900 and 1935 than it is today. A study of maternity cases in Israel
in 1958 showed that, for women born in Europe, America, and Australia-
New Zealand, 32 per cent of those having a third birth admitted having
resorted to induced abortion./5

Finally, in five of the People's Republics in Eastern Europe, which

have legalized abortion, the subsequent history of the rise of registered
abortions, as summarized by Tietze,/6 is amazingly like that of Japan.
In Hungary, for example, medical boards were established about 1953 for
authorizing therapeutic abortions. "That these boards progressively liber-
alized their policies is reflected in the growing numbers of legal abortions
from 1953 onward." Afterthe decree of 1956 permitting "the interruption
of pregnancy on request, the number of legal abortions increased rapidly
until in 1959 it exceeded the number of live births."/7 Not only did the
legal abortion rate rise rapidly in all four countries but also, as in Japan
again, there was a substantial non-legal rate. The number of abortions
per 100 births in 1961 was in Hungary, 145; Czechoslovakia, 55; Poland,
35; and Yugoslavia (1960), 34.

If, then, abortion was once a widespread practice in the most advanced
countries of Western Europe, if it is now widespread in Eastern Europe,
where it is legal and subject to record, and where economic development
is behind that of Western Europe, there is no reason to regard the resort
to abortion as peculiarly Japanese. It is not an outgrowth of ancient tra-
dition in Tokugawa times; not an outgrowth of the absence of Christian
ideology. It is a response to social and economic conditions arising in
country after country at a particular time in the process of moderniza-
tion. The fact that abortion was not safe earlier in the century shows
how determined the people of northwest Europe were in their reproduc-
tive control. Now that it is reasonably safe when legalized,/8 it is an ef-
fective means of family limitation for Hungary and Poland as well as for
Japan.

If Western prudery and Oriental realism have led to an exaggeration

of the role of abortions in Japan, this tendency has been helped by a sta-
tistical illusion. Not only have abortions increased as births have fallen,
but the sum of births and registered abortions for each year yields a
combined rate per 1000 population that has changed little during the big
fertility drop (Table 1)./9 This seems to say that an abortion was re-
sponsible for each birth saved. Actually, of course, abortions can and do
occur much more frequently than births can./10 Other factors must
therefore have played a role in Japan's falling birth rate.

Other Responses in Japan

One such factor was contraception. Irene Taeuber points out that this
practice increased rapidly after 1950 although abortions were available,

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 347

Table. 1. Births and Abortions in Japan.

Annual totals (000's) Sum per

1000
Births Abortions Sum Population

1949 2,697 102 2,798 34.4

1950 2,338 320 2,658 32.1
1951 2,138 459 2,596 30.8
1952 2,005 798 2,803 32.8
1953 1,868 1,067 2,935 33.9
1954 1,770 1,143 2,913 33.1
1955 1,727 1,170 2,897 32.6
1956 1,665 1,159 2,825 31.4
1957 1,563 1,122 2,686 29.6
1958 1,653 1,128 2,781 30.4
1959 1,626 1,099 2,725 29.5

Sources: Kimura, Masabumi. "A Review of Induced Abortion

Surveys in Japan." Paper No. 43 in mimeographed
proceedings of the 1961 conference of the Interna-
tional Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
P. 1; United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1960.

relatively safe, and cheap./11 Use prior to that time is shown by a 1950
national survey which found that a fifth of all couples were currently
practicing contraception and that nearly a third had done so at some time.
Furthermore, the age-pattern of change in marital fertility shows that,
before the great rise in reported abortions began, couples were increas-
ingly controlling their births, especially at the older ages./12

Of late, further control has been achieved by sterilization. Reported

operations, totaling 5,695 in 1949, averaged 42,843 per year during 19 55-
59, at which time they equalled 3.8 per cent of the reported abortions.
There is even some indication of a small amount of infanticide./13

In addition, the Japanese migrated from their homeland in sizable

numbers. The proportion of Japanese persons aged 15-59 outside to
those inside the home islands was 2.8 per cent in 1920; 3.2 per cent in
1930; and 5.6 per cent in 1940./14

Finally, the Japanese have exhibited still another adjustment-post-

ponement of marriage. The proportion ever married among girls aged
15-19 fell from 17.7 in 1920 to 1.8 per cent in 1955, and for women 20-24
it fell from 68.6 to 33.9 (Table 2). The shift for men was also drastic.
Indeed, it may be that the age at marriage rose faster in Japan than in
any other country in history. By 1959 the nation had a marital age higher
than that of most Western countries (Table 3). In the United States in
that year nearly half the brides in first marriages were under 20, but
in Japan only one-nineteenth of them were that young. However, the
Japanese concentrate their marriages more heavily in the modal ages-
20-24 for brides and 25-29 for grooms-than Western countries do, as
Table 3 shows.

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348

Table 2. Japan: Changing Proportion Ever Married, by Age.

Percentage Ever Married

Age Women Men

1920 1940 1955 1920 1940 1955

15-19 17.7 4.3 1.8 2.8 0.4 0.1

20-24 68.6 46.5 33.9 29.1 10.0 9.8
25-29 90.8 86.5 79.8 74.3 58.0 59.3
30-34 95.9 94.7 92.0 91.8 89.7 90.8
35-39 97.3 97.1 96.0 95.9 95.6 97.0
40-44 97.9 98.0 97.6 97.2 97.3 98.3
45-49 98.1 98.4 98.3 97.7 98.0 98.8

Source of data: Taeuber, Irene B. The Population of Japan.

Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1958.
P. 211.

Table 3. Age at First Marriage, Selected Countries.

All Mar- Percentage Marrying at Following Ages

Country riages
and with Age Under
Date Known 20 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40+

Brides

Japan, 1959 100 5.3 63.8 27.5 2.9 0.3 0.1

U. S. A., 1959 100 48.6 37.8 7.4 2.8 1.5 2.0
Sweden, 1950 100 13.5 45.0 24.6 8.3 4.1 4.6
Italy, 1951 100 14.1 46.0 27.0 6.9 3.2 2.8

Grooms

Japan 100 0.4 23.7 61.8 12.7 1.2 0.3

U.S.A. 100 16.1 53.5 18.5 6.1 2.6 3.2
Sweden 100 1.9 31.4 38.4 15.7 6.7 5.9
Italy 100 1.7 24.6 42.3 18.3 8.1 5.0

Sources of data: for Japan, United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1961,

Table 28; for the United States (29 states only), U. S.
National Office of Vital Statistics. Vital statistics of
the United States 1959, Vol. 1, p. 61; for Sweden and
Italy, United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1958,
Table 22.

The one adjustment the Japanese have not adopted is celibacy. In 1955
the proportion of women aged 40-44 who had never married was only 2.4
per cent, whereas in the United States in 1950 it was 8.1, and in Italy in
1951 it was 15.7 per cent (see Table 4). It looks as though the age at
marriage is flexible in Japan, but not the decision to marry or not to

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 349

Table 4. Proportion Never Married among Women Aged 40-44.

Per cent

Japan, 1955 2.4

U.S.A., 1950 8.1
New Zealand, 1951 11.3
England and Wales, 1951 14.2
Austria, 1951 14.3
Italy, 1951 15.7
Sweden, 1950 15.8
Finland, 1950 17.8
Portugal, 1950 18.5
North Ireland, 1951 23.0
Ireland, 1951 26.7

marry. However, even this may change. The women who in 1955 were
aged 40-44 represent a generation whose marriages, occurring mainly
in 1930-40, were still almost wholly arranged by parents. As the age at
marriage gets later, and as mating becomes more a matter of individual
selection, a rising contingent of women may never succeed in attracting
a man they are willing to marry.

The Theory of the Multiphasic Response

What, then, is the picture that Japan presents? It is the picture of a

people responding in almost every demographic manner then known to
some powerful stimulus. Within a brief period they quickly postponed
marriage, embraced contraception, began sterilization, utilized abor-
tions, and migrated outward. It was a determined, multiphasic response,
and it was extremely effective with respect to fertility. It brought down
the gross reproduction rate, with only a brief wartime interruption, from
2.7 in 1920 to 0.99 in 1959./15 A change that took at least 60 years in
the United States required only 40 years in Japan.

What was the stimulus that caused such a massive response? In my

view, the demographic stimulus was the decline in mortality and the sus-
tained natural increase to which it gave rise. The data prior to 1920,
though not entirely trustworthy; do at least suggest a declining death
rate./16 This is consistent with the better established trend after 1920,
when, in not quite 30 years, mortality dropped to an extent that had re-
quired, starting at the same level, 76 years in Sweden and 37 years in
Germany. The resulting natural increase climbed above 10 per 1000
around the turn of the century and averaged 12.8 from 1900 to 1959.
When, as in Fig. 1, these rates are plotted on the same chart as those
for three Scandinavian countries averaged together (Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden), with Japan lagged 50 years, the latter appears to be re-en-
acting the history of natural increase in northwestern Europe, but more
abruptly./17

But why the multiphasic reaction to sustained natural increase? Were

the Japanese experiencing increased poverty? Were their "means of
subsistence" disappearing under the impact of increased millions? No,

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350

NATURAL
INCREASE

_ I
DENMARK, NORWAY, AND SWEDEN

1870 1890 1910 1930 1960 1970

0 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ L 'PERIOD
I 60 1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960

Figure 1. Rates of natural increase in Denmark-Norway-Sweden

(averaged) and Japan, with Japan lagged 50 years.

such an explanation-of a type often called upon in demographic theory-

has no relation to the facts. During the 45 years from 1913 to 1958 the
average rate of growth of industrial output in Japan rose by 5.4 per cent
per year, thus exceeding the 5-per-cent rate of Germany, Italy, and the
U. S.A. from 1880 to 1913, and greatly exceeding the performance of the
United Kingdom and France in any sustained period./18 Obviously the
demographic response of the Japanese is not to be explained in terms of
spreading poverty or diminishing resources. Nor were the people influ-
enced in their behavior by concern about national 'overpopulation," for
they let their government proclaim a policy of population expansion dur-
ing the "Co-prosperity" era. In short, an explanation of the vigorous
Japanese response to sustained natural increase must account for the
antagonism between such increase and prosperity, in terms of behavior
prompted by personal rather than national goals.

Was the Northwest European Response Similar? Since the northwest

European countries, years ahead of Japan, also had a sustained natural
increase, did they manifest a similar multiphasic response? The answer
is undeniably yes. Although generally overlooked because of our pre-
occupation with the contraceptive issue, the fact is that every country in
northwest Europe reacted to its persistent excess of births over deaths

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 351

with virtually the entire range of possible responses. Regardless of na-

tionality, language, and religion, each industrializing nation tended to
postpone marriage, to increase celibacy, to resort to abortion, to prac-
tice contraception in some form, and to emigrate overseas. The timing
and relative importance of the reactions were not identical in the various
countries, and of course methods could not be used that were not then
technically feasible for the public at large (e.g., harmless sterilization);
but the remarkable thing is that all of the northwest European countries
reacted, that they did so in each case with the reappearance of the whole
range of responses, and that virtually the entire panorama was later re-
peated in Japan.

That the stimulus was also similar to that in Japan is clear. Our
three Scandinavian countries in Fig. 1 reached a high plateau of natural
increase around 1815 and sustained it for more than a hundred years.
Since the plateau was reached long before a significant drop in the birth
rate occurred, there were about six decades of what was then an unpre-
cedented rate of human multiplication-sufficient to double the population
every 61 years in the absence of emigration-before the birth rate began
visibly to fall around 1870, and it took another 30 years or so before the
drop in fertility could move fast enough to gain on the steadily falling
mortality. Periods of substantial increase had of course been known be-
fore, but they were brief and virtually self-correcting, since each time
the death rate would soon rise again and wipe out the gain. What was un-
precedented in northwest Europe was that self-correction was avoided so
long over such a wide region. Local catastrophes did occur-as in the
Irish potato famine of the 1840's-but it was characteristic of Europe at
the time that these were accepted not as inescapable acts of God but as
examples of what must be avoided at all costs by collective effort. North-
west Europe was winning the fight against death to a degree never before
accomplished, and its success, with the resulting natural increase, ex-
plains the desperateness of the subsequent demographic response.

The Theory of How the Stimulus Produces the Response. But how
were the stimulus and the response connected? It was not true in Europe,
any more than in Japan, that the connecting link was poverty. From 1860
to 1900, the gross domestic product grew on the average at almost 3 per
cent per year in Denmark and Sweden, and almost 2 per cent in Nor-
way./19 When interpreting the effects of sustained population growth,
most observers seem to assume that the question concerns the level of
living. Was the population growth too fast, they ask, to maintain the gen-
eral level? If the answer is "no," interesttends to vanish, because there
is no "problem." If the answer is 'yes,' then all sorts of further conse-
quences supposedly follow, because, with growing poverty, human beings
must bestir themselves. But, as we have seen, the northwest Europeans
and Japanese bestirred themselves in the face of prolonged natural in-
crease without being goaded to do so by rising poverty. The answer to
the central question about modern demographic history cannot be posed,
then, in the framework of ordinary population theory, which assumes the
sole "population factor" to be some relation between the population-re-
sources ratio and the collective level of living. It is doubtful that any
question about demographic behavior can be satisfactorily posed in such
terms, because human beings are not motivated by the population-re-
sources ratio even when they know about it (which is seldom).

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352

My own view is that no society has been geared to a sustained high

rate of natural increase except by conquest. Under a prolonged drop in
mortality with industrialization, people in northwest Europe and Japan
found that their accustomed demographic behavior was handicapping them
in their effort to take advantage of the opportunities being provided by
the emerging economy. They accordingly began changing their behavior.
Thus it was in a sense the rising prosperity itself, viewed from the
standpoint of the individual's desire to get ahead and appear respectable,
that forced a modification of his reproductive behavior.

Mortality decline impinged on the individual by enlarging his family.

Unless something were done to offset this effect, it gave him, as a child,
more siblings with whom to share whatever derived from his parents as
well as more likelihood of reckoning with his parents for a longer period
of life; and, as an adult, it gave him a more f ragmented and more de-
layed share of the patrimony with which to get married and found his own
family, while at the same time it saddled him, in founding that family,
with the task of providing for more children-for rearing them, educating
them, endowing their marriages, etc.,-in a manner assuring them a status
no lower than his. The obligations of marriage and expanded parenthood
were not easy, as Banks has shown so convincingly for nineteenth century
Britain, /20 in a changing society where one's position was threatened from
every side and where one's children had to acquire new and costly forms
of education. The parentneeded to conserve some means for himself, be-
cause of longer life-expectancy and because of the importance of capital
for seizingopportunitiesorstavingoff disaster inthe fluid situation of the
times.

The inappropriateness of the old demographic behavior was not con-

fined to one segment of society, such as the a middle class" or the towns
and cities. Nor was it characteristic of some societies and not others.
Whenever and wherever mortality declined on a sustained basis, there
the continuation of old demographic patterns brought a train of disad-
vantages.

Readjustments in the Agricultural Areas

Our view receives an acid test, for example, with respect to the peas-
antry, because a central tenet of population theory is that farmers lag
behind other classes in altering their demographic behavior. We note,
however, that the explanations given for this alleged fact are mutually
contradictory. On the one hand, it is commonly taken for granted that no
adjustment is made by farmers because none is needed: agrarian socie-
ties can assimilate natural increase indefinitely, because "children are
an asset on the farm." This makes thefarmer's unchanging reproductive
behavior purely rational. However, it is hard to avoid seeing that a sus-
tained natural increase in a delimited farming area will eventually mean
"too many people for the land." This much granted, the theorist may ex-
plain ruraldemographic slowness by saying that farmers feel children to
be an asset on the farm. Now, however, the farmer is no longer rational
but irrational, and one must find an explanation for his stupidity. This is
easy if one assumes that peasants are "traditional intheir attitudes.' By
this route we are led to feel it is natural for modern attitudes and prac-
tices to begin in the cities and "diffuse' gradually to the countryside.

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 353

Such thinking appears to be a case of a non-existent fact being "ex-

plained' by a plethora of unsubstantiated reasons. In Japan and north-
west Europe, population increase was especially hard on the peasantry,
with the consequence that their reaction was especially drastic. The
structure of the rural societies was such that they could accommodate
permanently growing populations only on one assumption-territorial ex-
pansion. Technological improvement provided no accommodation, because
it called for fewer rather than more workers. As capital was increasingly
applied to agriculture and the optimum size of farm unit rose, a young man
found it more difficult, rather than less, to acquire what was necessary in
agriculture to guarantee a satisfactory social status.

Prolonged Natural Increase, Inheritance, and Agriculture. In the ab-

sence of long-run natural increase, there is no general problem of rural
inheritance. The few parents with numerous surviving offspring are for-
tunate, for they have not only the child labor but also the eventual old-
age security that children can furnish. Their children can receive enough
land or substance to marry at a normal age, because each large family
is matched by families that have died out entirely or have had only one
child survive. Naturally, land and goods flow from the dead to the living
in several ways-by purchase prior to death, by collateral relatives in
the absence of true heirs, by remarriage of widows--and so large fami-
lies acquire the means to endow their children for marriage. Without
population growth, then, the demographic inequalities of one generation
are ironed out in the next. There is no general problem of inheritance
but only a problem for an occasional family that has lost out by inepti-
tude or has no heirs because of misfortune.

When, however, there is a sustained high rate of natural increase,

inheritance becomes a chronic problem. Since the proportion of families
with numerous surviving children is now muchhigher, these families are
not matched by others that have land but few or no survivors. As a con-
sequence, if their children are given land to marry with, the size of the
farm will be reduced; if they are given cash or goods, its capital will be
denuded. The parents are reluctant to do either, because they also have
to live and, given their now greater life-expectancy, they hang on to the
land until much later in the life of the offspring. Young people are forced
to postpone marriage, and some toforego it altogether. Thus the strictly
agrarian system has very little capacity to absorb population increase.

This inability, be it noted, has nothing to do with 'the inheritance

system." The latter is concerned solely with the matter of discrimina-
tion among potentialheirs, whereas our concern is with the growth of the
total number of potential heirs (all with their social expectations) in re-
lation to the resources available in agriculture. If there are more heirs
than can be accommodated at the expected standard of living with the
land available, no inheritance system can itself alter this fact. It can at
best decide who gets hurt and who does not. In other words, if there is
no sustained natural increase in a settled agrarian area, any system of
inheritance will work. If the opposite is the case, then no inheritance
system will work, unless, of course, there is some real solution avail-
able. Despite the vogue of inheritance systems in population theory, it
is doubtful that they play any determinative role in demographic change.
Rather, they simply reflect whatever demographic solutions are devel-
oped in the society. This view is strengthened when one realizes that

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354

fixed and rigid inheritance systems are figments of the social scientist's
imagination. They are not something "laid on,' which the people follow
in the fashion of automatons; rather, they are fashioned and modified as
changing conditions and interests demand.

"Traditionalism" and Agrarian Demographic Response. If historical-

ly the peasant communities of Japan and western Europe experienced a
sustained natural increase, did they fail to respond successfully because
"the peasant was wedded to his traditional value system' ? To say so is
to commit not only a factual error, as we shall see in a moment, but also
a tautology. An explanation in terms of 'tradition" has no value in social
science, because "tradition" is merely a name for absence of change. A
type of social behavior is like the momentum of a moving body: it will
not change unless something forces it to change. If the absence of a con-
trary force is itself not explained, we have no real theory of the persist-
ence but merely another name for it. As for the so-called values, they
should be recognized as being a part, or aspect, of the behavior itself
and, accordingly, as requiring to be explained rather than being used as
the explanation. The fact that people migrate is not explained by their
favorable evaluation of migration. By definition, nobody does anything
voluntary without some purpose, however vague, in mind. The question
of change or persistence is therefore a question of what did or did not
act upon the total action (motive-plus-conduct). In other words, to say
that fertility continues to be high in some group because of the group's
"high-fertility values" is like saying that birds fly because they have
wings.

In the case of the European peasantry, however, the alleged fact to be

explained-a lack of demographic response-is itself not true. The
demographic behavior of the rural population did change, and it changed
drastically, because it had to. The common assumption to the contrary
seems to arise from our parochial tendency to ignore all changes except
the reduction of marital fertility by contraception. If contraception was
not at first adopted on a major scale in most of the agrarian sectors, it
was because ready alternatives were available. One of these was migra-
tion. As the economic revolution advanced, the rural sections found in
the rising cities an ever expanding outlet for their excess natural in-
crease-an outlet that helped them to capitalize on the opportunities of-
fered by continued industrialization.

Indeed, as we know, in all of the industrializing countries rural-urban

migration removed not only the farmers' natural increase but also a
substantial portion of the base population as well. In Japan, for example,
Irene Taeuber estimates that, without migration, the rural population of
45.9 million in 1920 would have reached 62.6 million by 1940 instead of
the actual 45.5 million./21 The significance of rural-urban migration is
that it involves a shift of occupation as well as residence. In fact, mem-
bers of a farm family can leave agriculture, either part-time or fulltime,
without ever leaving home./L2 The best indicator of rural migratory
adjustment is therefore the diminution of the agricultural labor force.
In Great Britain the greatest number of men employed in agriculture
was 1.8 million in 1851. A hundred years later, when the total popu-
lation was nearly 2-1/2 times as great as in 1851, the agricultural male
labor force was down to 1.1 million./23 In Japan the population em-
ployed in agriculture, given as 15.7 million in 1876,/24 was 13.7 million

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 355

in 1958/25 when the total population was more than 2-1/2 times greater.
Daughters often left the countryside in greater abundance than sons. Vil-
lage girls in Japan went to work in cities as maids or in factories and
shops, typically remaining away for six years, often saving enough to get
married either upon returning home or while remaining in distant towns
and cities./26

Thus it can hardly be said that rural population in industrializing

countries made no demographic response. They responded to sustained
natural increase by the drastic process of removing it. Their failure to
feature contraception and abortion was not due to 'traditional attitudes"
(mass migration out of agriculture was not "traditional" either) but to
the availability of an alternative which fitted the interests and structure
of peasant families in the evolving economy.

The critical moment in the peasant family-cycle, especially in north-

west Europe, was the time when the surviving young people were to get
married. Up until then their labor was useful on the farms and their
consumption limited; but, if they were to marry, they had to have the
means (i.e., adequate land) to support a family in a fully adult, independ-
ent, and respectable manner. The common process by which reproduc-
tion was brought into equilibrium with the agrarian economy was the
postponement or hastening of marriage according to the socially defined
scarcity or abundance of land. With a prolonged decline in mortality,
there were more claimants to land for marriage and a greater reluctance
on the part of elders to give it up; but the same progressive forces in the
society which were bringing the mortality decline were also opening up
opportunities for employment in non-agricultural sectors. The decision
to stay in agriculture or to seize these new opportunities was made in
the young person's life at about the same time as the marital decision.
Indeed, the two decisions-whether to postpone marriage and whether to
leave agriculture-were doubtless often made jointly. Leaving agricul-
ture might be the only hope for getting married-as in the case of Japan-
ese girls who had to have a dowry. Migration out of agriculture was
thus an adjustment that was congruent with the response-pattern already
built into the rural social structure.

This adjustment would not have been available, however, if it had not
fitted into and aided the trend of the larger economy. Since industriali-
zation by its very nature requires an exodus from agriculture,/27 the
fact that economic development was occurring is proof enough that rural-
urban migration was being rewarded. Many a farm got desperately
needed capital, many a farm-boy or farm-girl achieved matrimony, be-
cause of receipts from the city. The adjustment of Japanese and Euro-
pean peasants was clearly not a descent into grim poverty and senseless
subdivision; it was not a 'resistance to the forces of modernization" in
the name of a 'traditional value system." It was, on the contrary, a
utilization of the new opportunities of the economic revolution.

Delayed Marriage, a Continued Rural Response. The rural popula-

tions of industrializing nations did not respond to sustained natural in-
crease by one means alone. In addition to out-migration, they adopted
their old mechanism-postponement of marriage-to the new exigences,
particularly in regions remote from urban centers. They did this, of
course, not as a deliberate effort to reduce fertility or to solve the popu-
lation problem, but as a response to the complexity and insecurity of the

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356

new requirements for respectable adult status under changing circum-

stances. In Japan, as noted already, a dowry was required for a girl's
marriage. Her farm family, short on land and long on surviving mem-
bers, needed cash more than it needed girl-power. Japanese factories
and offices, on the other hand, needed cheap labor. It was therefore ad-
vantageous all around for rural girls to work under supervision, have
their salaries returned home, and delay marriage for several years./28
As a consequence, the age at marriage rose almost as fast in the rural
areas of Japan as it did in the urban./29 In neither sector was postpone-
ment a response to deepening poverty. Agriculture, as well as the total
economy, was increasing in productivity./30 In all sectors of the econo-
my, then, families had to grasp the new opportunities of the evolving so-
ciety or else face relative loss of social status and consumption. Their
chances were not improved by demographic behavior that permitted the
large family size made possible by declining mortality.

Rural marital postponement was particularly important in the eigh-

teenth and early nineteenth centuries in northwest Europe, because out-
side opportunities were then too few to make out-migration work as the
sole adjustment. Even in England and Wales, the country most conducive
to rural-urban migration around 1800, less than 17 per cent of the popu-
lation resided in places of more than 20,000 inhabitants. If within a dec-
ade the natural increase of the rest had migrated to cities, the urban
population would have risen by approximately two-thirds instead of the
actual one-fourth. In the United States, with plausible assumptions as to
differential natural increase, one finds that, had all the natural increase
of the farm population and one-half of that of the rural nonfarm popula-
tion between 1840 and 1850, gone to the urban places, the latter would
have increased by approximately 275 per cent during the decade, or three
times as fast as they actually did. Apparently, the earlier in economic
development the downward trend in mortality occurs, the more difficult
it is, other things equal, to avoid solely by out-migration an increase of
people on farms./31

Even with both marital postponement and rural-urban migration, a

decline in farm-size often occurred in areas of northern Europe. A
study of twenty villages in southern Poland finds, for example, that the
average size fell from 7.24hectares in 1787 to 3.17 in 1931, 'although the
whole area owned by peasants increased from 16,966 to 21,558 ha."/32
In Ireland there was evidently a similar shift, with the result that by 1841
more than half the holdings were of less than five acres./33 Even in the
United States, in the Southeastern region, the improved acreage per farm
fell from 103.6 in 1860 to a low point of 37.9 in 1925./34

Forgetting the possibility of increased yields,/35 one tends to view

such declines as the consequence of some "inheritance system" or as
simply an indication of population pressure and deepening poverty; but
they can more properly be viewed, in my opinion, partly as the mainte-
nance of the same product per family with less land and partly as the
consequence of a one- or two-generation lag of the adjustment mechanism
behind the lowered mortality. That the adjustment mechanisms were
there is evident in the twenty Polish villages. As can be seen in line 3
of Table 5, the number of children born per mother, during roughly the
period 1872 to 1914, was almost twice on the largest farms what it was
on the smallest. This positive association between completed fertility

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 357

Table 5. Children Born and Surviving, and Age at Marriage,

for Polish Mothers Born between 1855 and 1880,
by Size of Farm.

Size of Farm (Hectares)

Land- 0-1 1-4 4-7 7+

less

Number of Mothers 9 36 110 31 15

Average Year of Birth

for Mothers 1872 1875 1875 1874 1874
Number of Births
per Mother 3.9 5.4 6.4 7.7 9.1
Surviving Children
per Mother/a 2.9 4.1 5.0 5.9 8.0
Age at Marriage of
Mother 31 25 24 22 20
Births per Year from
Marriage to Age 45 0.28 0.26 0.30 0.35 0.37
Births per Year from
Marriage to Birth 0.43 0.35 0.36 0.39 0.41
of Last Child

a/Evidently these were the children who survived to get married.

Source: Stys, W. "The Influence of Economic Conditions on the

Fertility of Peasant Women." Population Studies 11(2):
136-148. Nov. 1957,

and size of farm has been reported often for peasants./36 In the Polish
case, differential mortality adds to the inequality in surviving children,
but only slightly. The main factor in the differential fertility and in the
number of surviving children alike is the age at marriage (line 5). That
there is little limitation within marriage is shown by the sixth line-
births per year between a woman's marriage and her 45th year. Com-
parison of the last two lines suggests, however, that the poorer peasant
couples stopped their reproduction earlier (perhaps by abstinence and
abortion), or suffered more impaired fecundity; for the births per year
between marriage and the last child (last line) show smaller class dif-
ferences than those between marriage and the woman's 45th birthday
(previous line).

The European peasants' response to sustained naturalincrease clear-

ly reflected a social structure that held married couples responsible for
their children. This feature-along with its corollary, postponement of
marriage for those incapable of supporting children--was part of the in-
dependence and separateness accorded the nuclear family, as opposed to
the joint household, in west European society. As such, it went back to
medieval and post-medieval times;/37 and it tended to yield a later age
at marriage than is found in most joint household systems. It did not
necessarily produce a late marital age, however, because, with high mor-
tality, individuals so unfortunate as to have to marry late were balanced

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358

by those lucky enough to marry early. When, in the late eighteenth and
the nineteenth centuries, the rural areas were faced with a natural in-
crease unprecedented in its size and duration, postponement of marriage
appeared as one of the adjustments. This was by no means the only ad-
justment that enabled the peasants to avoid subdividing land to the point
of severe poverty and resurgent mortality. In addition, the peasants
maximized migration off the farm, increased permanent celibacy, and
curtailed reproduction in the later years of marriage (probably by abor-
tion, folk-contraception, and abstinence). Since, owing to the accelerating
economic transformation, rural-urban migration became increasingly
available, the forces tending to depress fertility, especially marital fer-
tility, did not need to act so strongly as they did in towns and cities.
In the latter places, migration out of agriculture was obviously not a
possible alternative. The city-dweller's "migration" into a more lucra-
tive occupation was mainly by acquiring education, skill, experience, and
contacts-none of which was helped by animprovident marriage or a high
marital fertility. His solution lay more in the direction of contraception
and abortion, to which he had better access than the peasant.

Ireland as a Test Case

If correct, our analysis should hold not only for the different social
classes but also for the various countries of northwest Europe, even in
cases that are commonly regarded as demographically unique. Ireland,
for example, is habitually cited as a country having in modern times a
population history unlike that of any other nation. Not only did she ex-
perience a pronounced decline in population while her neighbors were all
showing an unprecedented increase, but she exhibited a tendency toward
late marriage and celibacy that strikes many observers as peculiar. On
the assumption of uniqueness, particularistic explanations of her demo-
graphic history have been given-e.g. that it is a result of the Irish fam-
ine, the "land" situation, or extreme religious zeal./38

But how unique is Ireland? It is certainly not unique in having a

marital age that was comparatively late to begin with and which grew
later in the last half of the nineteenth century. In 1830-40 Irish women
married reasonably early for Europeans: the proportion of brides who
were under 21 was 28.1 per cent; under 26, it was 66.5 per cent-both
proportions similar to those in England and Wales./39 The Irish age at
marriage evidently rose after that, reaching its highest point about 1911,
at which time it started gradually down, as- Table 6 shows. By 1957 the
average age at marriage for Irish women was 27.6, only two years above
the figure of 25.6 years for women in England and Wales./40

If the late age at marriage in Ireland is to be explained, it must there-

fore be explained in terms applicable to northwest Europe as a whole. In
seventeen countries of that region around 1950, the proportion of brides
at first marriage who were age 25 or older was 39.6 per cent, compared
to 24.9 per cent in three East European nations and 21.5 per cent in five
overseas industrial countries of European origin. The 1959 Irish figure
of 53.1 per cent seems abnormally high until we realize that in 1950 the
Spanish percentage was 50.4, the Norwegian 50.8, and the Swiss 46.7.

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 359

Table 6. Percentage of Women in Young Age Groups Ever

Married: Ireland and Sweden.

Ireland Sweden

Women Women

Date 15-19 20-24 25-29 Date 15-19 20-24 25-29

- - - 1750 4.4 27.3 56.6

- - - - 1800 2.7 22.4 51.8
1851/a 0.0 10.0 40.0 1850 0.8 16.5 49.4
1861 2.2 25.3 36.0 - - - -
1871 1.9 21.9 51.0 1870 1.0 15.7 46.2
1891 0.8 14.0 40.9 - - - -
1901 0.6 12.0 37.8/b 1900 1.1 19.6 48.5
1911 0.5 11.6 34.4 /5 1910 1.1 19.8 48.6
1926 0.7 13.0 38.2 1'920 1.1 20.3 49.3
1936 0.9 13.6 35.9 1930 1.0 19.6 48.3
1946 1.6 17.5 42.4
69.7 1945 3.3 36.1
1951 1.1 17.7 45.4/b 1950 3.7 40.3 73.6

a/These percentages relate to age groups "under 17," "17-25," and "25-
35."

b/For 1901, 1911, and 1951, data were available only for the age group
25-34. The figures here are our estimates derived by interpolation
from earlier and later censuses giving the five age classifications

Sources: Ireland, Census of Population, 1946, Vol. 5, Part 1, p. 34; U. N.

Demographic Yearbook 1958, p. 187;
British Sessional Papers, 1856, Vol. 31, pp. 0-99; 1863, Vol. 61,
p. 616; 14, Vol. 74, Part 2, Table 18;
Historisk Statistik for Sverige, Vol. 1, 1720- 195 (Stockholm;
1955).

Granted that Ireland is part of the late-marrying wing of northwest

Europe, one may explain this fact as due to her Roman Catholicism. But
for five Catholic countries of the region,/41 the average percentage of
first-brides aged 25-plus was 40.4, as compared to 39.1 for ten non-
Catholic countries. Even if Catholicism were involved in Irish marital
postponement, how would it be? It would certainly not be because the
church has an injunction against early marriage. The usual interpreta-
tion is that the church defines marriage as second best, and hence gives
no powerful encouragement to early marriage; but Belgium, an eminently
Catholic country, has an earlier age at first marriage for females than
does Norway, Sweden, or Scotland.

The way to understand Ireland's demographic career is hardly in such

particularistic terms. Fascination with her late marriage should not
blind us to the fact that she responded to long-continued natural increase
by other means as well. She responded by permanent celibacy, for ex-
ample, and here again Ireland was not an isolated case but rather an ex-
treme exemplification of the northwest European pattern, itself extreme.
In 1951 some 24.7 percent of the Irish women aged 45 or more had never

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360

been married. In 1950 the Icelandic figure was 21.5 per cent; the Nor-
wegian and the Scottish, 20.9. The degree to which Europe stands out
can be seen from the following:

Table 7. Regional Comparison of Average Percentage Single

of Women Aged 45 or Over.

Number Average Percentage

of Single among Women
Countries Aged 45 or Over

European/a 30 12.6

Northwest European 22 15.7

Catholic 8 16.6
Non-Catholic 14 15.2

Eastern European 8 4.0

Overseas European Industrial 5 9.8

Moslem (North Africa, Turkey,

Pakistan) 7 2.0
Asian 12 2.2

a/Ireland is excluded throughout. If added, the northwest Europe aver-

age rises to 16.1 and the "Catholic" group to 17.5. France is counted
as a "non-Catholic" country. Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England
and Wales are counted as separate countries.

Source of data: United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1960, Table 10.

A third Irish response-again typically west-European and extreme in

character--was the very high and prolonged rate of out-migration. The
peak of Irish-born living abroad was reached about 1880, when, in four
countries alone, they represented 60 per cent as many as lived in Ireland
itself. From 1901 to 1956 the net emigration came to an estimated 1.34
million, an average of 24,300 per year. The loss during 1946 to 1956
amounted to about half the number of births./42

It is commonly claimed that the Irish postponed marriage or migrated

as an alternative to practicing birth control within marriage. However,
as Glass has noted,/43 data from the 1946census show class differences
in marital fertility. Furthermore, a decline of 25 per cent occurred in
overall marital fertility between 1911 and 1946. Couples in Ireland, as
elsewhere in Europe, were apparently taking to birth control, though not
to the same extent as in neighboring countries. One should note, of
course, that a shift to a later age at marriage, other things equal, will
independently bring a reduction in marital fertility by pushing a greater
part of the marital exposure into the less fecund years of the reproduc-
tive span. It will cause an additional loss through the greater proportion
of women who die before marrying. For these reasons the influence of a
shift in the age at marriage is greater than the simple proportion of the
reproductive years added or eliminated.

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 361

if, then, Ireland exhibited a multiphasic response similar to that shown

by her neighbors, differing from theirs only in the relative emphasis
placed on the various means and in its vigor-so drastic that it halved
the absolute population within 80 years-the explanation must be in terms
applicable to the rest of the region. A significant fact is that Ireland was,
and has to a considerable degree remained, a rural part of northwest
Europe. It was a rural backland when it belonged to Great Britain, and
after its independence in 1922 it was cut off from its most industrial
section, the northern six counties--much as if Mississippi, Arkansas,
and Louisiana were given their independence but with New Orleans and
the rest of the Gulf Coast removed. A late age at marriage, as we have
seen, was particularly characteristic of rural northwest Europe; and in
Ireland it prevailed more in the rural areas than in the towns. Ireland's
continued rurality, together with the circumstance that Catholicism be-
came a symbol and rallying point of Irish Nationalism as against the
Protestant British, enabled the Catholic clergy to remain strong. Being
in control to an unusual degree, the celibate clergy could implement its
ascetic supervision over courtship and instill its negative attitude toward
marriage, including state enforcement of the indissolubility of wedlock.
It thus gave its blessing to marital postponement and lay celibacy, and at
the same time kept down illegitimate fertility. Concomitantly, the ex-
ceptional power of the clergy tended, as in other Catholic countries, to
discourage economic development and thus to keep the area rural.

As an agrarian region, Ireland partook of the exodus out of agriculture

that accompanies modern economic development-except that, without
economic development in its own territory, the migration out of agricul-
ture was simultaneously a migration out of Ireland. In other words, in-
ternational and overseas migration and rural-urban migration were one
and the same thing for Ireland. The lack of economic opportunity at
home powerfully discouraged marriage, while ecclesiastical determina-
tion of family, criminal, customs, and censorship laws made abortions,
contraceptive materials, and birth control information and services dif-
ficult to obtain. Marriage tended to be postponed not only because the
economic requirements for it were hard to secure, not only because it
could not be dissolved if it proved personally obnoxious, but also because
it was likely to lead to several children. In addition, clerical control,
poor economic development, and rural community opinion worked to-
gether to discourage married women from entering the labor force, thus
reducing still more the economic support for marriage. Recently the
proportion of married women aged 15 to 65 in paid employment was
less than 3 per cent, as compared to about 23 per cent in England and
Wales./44

Ireland thus manifests a combination of the demographic responses of

Europe, extreme in its totality and in its result but composed of familiar
strands indeed, all understandable under the circumstances. It thus
illustrates the principle that the explanation of as fundamental a feature
of society as its demographic changes is not to be found in some inflexible
biological or economic law or in some particularistic cultural idiosyn-
crasy, but rather in the main features of the operating social organization
on the one hand and, on the other, in the changing conditions which arise
from past performance and the altering internationalpolitico-economic
environment.

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362

Conclusion

My thesis is that, faced with a persistent high rate of natural increase

resulting from past success in controlling mortality, families tended to
use every demographic means possible to maximize their new opportu-
nities and to avoid relative loss of status. An understanding of this
process in population theory has been hindered by a failure to see the
multiphasic character of the response and by an interpretation of demo-
graphic behavior as a response either to absolute need or to some cul-
tural idiosyncracy such as a particular "value system" or "custom."
When the demographic history of industrialized nations is analyzed com-
paratively, an amazing similarity of the response syndrome seems to me
to emerge. An explanation of a country's demographic behavior by ref-
erence to a peculiarity or accident of its culture fails to cope with this
basic similarity of response. Curiously, we do not adopt such an easy
way out with respect to mortality. We do not "explain" India's high death
rate and Sweden's low death rate by saying that the one "values" high
mortality and the other low mortality. Yet we sometimes come perilous-
ly close to this in regard to other aspects of human demography, espe-
cially fertility.

As for the view that the motivational linkage between change and re-
sponse depends on fear of absolute poverty, we have seen that it fails to
account for the fact that the multiphasic effort to reduce population
growth occurs simultaneously with a spectacular economic growth. Fear
of hunger as a principal motive may fit some groups in an extreme stage
of social disorganization or at a particular moment of crisis, but it fits
none with which I am familiar and certainly none of the advanced peoples
of western Europe and Japan. The fear of invidious deprivation appar-
ently has greater force, and hence the absolute level of living acts more
as an environmental condition than as a subjective stimulus. If each
family is concerned with its prospective standing in comparison to other
families within its reference group, we can understand why the peoples
of the industrializing and hence prospering countries altered their demo-
graphic behavior in numerous ways that had the effect of reducing the
population growth brought about by lowered mortality.

FOOTNOTES

1/ Kimura, Masabumi. "A Review of Induced Abortion Surveys in

Japan." Paper No. 43 in mimeographed proceedings of the 1961 con-
ference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Popula-
tion. P. 1.

2/ Muramatsu, Minoru. "Effect of Induced Abortion on the Reduction of

Births in Japan." Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 38:152-166.
April 1960.

3/ Glass, D. V. Population Policies and Movements in Europe. Oxford,

Clarendon Press, 1940. Pp. 278-280. Other health-fund data showed
more abortions than births in the late 1920's.

4/ Ibid., pp. 444-445.

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 363

5/ Bachi, Roberto, and Judah Matras. "Contraception and Induced Abor-

tions among Jewish Maternity Cases in Israel." Milbank Memorial
Fund Quarterly 40(2):207-229. April 1962. P. 227.

6/ See: Tietze, Christopher. "Legal Abortion in Eastern Europe."

Journal of the American Medical Association 175:1149-1154. April 1,
1961; Idem. "The Demographic Significance of Legal Abortion in
Eastern Europe.' Paper presented at annual meeting, Population
Association of America, April 25-27, 1963. Mimeographed.

7/ Tietze, op. cit., pp. 1149-1154.

8/ In Denmark and Sweden, 1953-57, there were only 6 or 7 deaths per

10,000 legal abortions. See: Tietze, Christopher. "The Current
Status of Fertility Control." Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol.
25, Summer 1960. P. 442.

9/ The combined rate would doubtless remain even more unchanging if

the number of unregistered abortions were known.

10/ According to surveys in 1949-50 and 1953-54, the gestation preced-

ing abortions in Japan lasted between 9 and 11 weeks, depending on
the order of the abortion. Kimura, op. cit., pp. 3, 9.

11/ Taeuber, Irene B. The Population of Japan. Princeton, Princeton

University Press, 1958. P. 274.
12/ Legitimate births per 1000 married women:

Age of married women 1950 rate as % of 1925 rate

15-19 92.8
20-24 96.4
25-29 93.3
30-34 75.4
35-39 54.4
40-44 40.5
45-49 13.2
Derived from data in: Taeuber, op. cit., p. 265.

13/ Ibid., pp. 278-282.

14/ Ibid., p. 203.

15/ Annual gross reproduction rates, 1920-55 from: Taeuber, op. cit.,
p. 232. Annual gross reproduction rates, 1956-59 from: Population
Index 28(2):205. April 1962.

16/ Taeuber, op. cit., pp. 50-51.

17/ Dudley Kirk pointed out in 1944 the similarity between the Japanese
birth and death rates of 1921-41 and those of England and Wales in
1880-1900. ("Population Changes in the Postwar World." American
Sociological Review, Vol. 9, Feb. 1944. P. 34.)

18/ Patel, Surendra J. "Rates of Industrial Growth in the Last Century,

1860-1958." Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol.9,
April 1961. Pp. 317-318.

19/ Based on average rates of growth over various specified periods,

with constant prices, as given in: Kuznets, Simon. "Quantitative
Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations: VI. Long-term Trends

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364

in Capital Formation Proportions." Economic Development and

Cultural Change, Vol. 9, July 1961. Pp. 76, 82, 88.

20/ Banks, J. A. Prosperity and Parenthood. London, Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1954.

21/ Op. cit., p. 145. Dr. Taeuber shows, p. 71, that the communes of
less than 10,000inhabitants-which in 1930 had 68.1 per cent of their
occupied population in agriculture-lost 4.6 per cent of their popula-
tion between 1920 and 1940, while the whole nation gained by 31.0
per cent. Since the farmland of Japan was densely settled already,
"absorption of additional population would have jeopardized economic
well-being, social organization, and political stability. The preser-
vation of the status quo required the exodus of younger sons and
daughters to urban areas and non-agricultural employment." (p. 73.)

22/ As a consequence, agriculturaldensity may be highest in those areas

where the most farmers are only part-time in that occupation. See:
Ishino, Iwao, and John W. Bennett. Types of the Japanese Rural
Economy. Columbus, Ohio State University Research Foundation,
1953. Mimeographed. Pp. 24-25.

23/ Mitchell, B. R., and Phyllis Dean. Abstract of British Historical

Statistics. Cambridge, University Press, 1962. Pp. 60-61. For
data on agriculture's diminishing proportion of the labor force in the
evolution of industrial countries, see: Kuznets, Simon. 'Industrial
Distribution of National Product and Labor Force." Economic De-
velopment and Cultural Change, Supplement to Vol. 5, No. 4, July
1957. Appendix Table 4.

24/ Ishii, Ryoichi. Population Pressure and Economic Life in Japan.

Chicago, University of Chicago Press [1937] . P. 78.
25/ Japan. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Statistical Survey of Economy
of Japan 1959. P. 9.

26/ In one village of 2,752 population in 1948, a total of 58 girls were

working in the city. Out of 72 girls marrying in 1948, 16 married
men in distant cities and towns. (Ishino and Bennett, op. cit., p. 91.)
The exodus of women out of agriculture in Japan is shown by the fact
that the younger the age group, the smaller the proportion in farm-
ing. (Taeuber, op. cit., p. 94.)

27/ Davis, K. "The Role of Class Mobility in Economic Development."

Population Review, Vol. 6, July 1962. Pp. 67-73; and Idem. "Internal
Migration and Urbanization in Relation to Economic Development."
Proceedings of the World Population Conference 1954, Vol. 2. New
York, 1955. Pp. 783-801.

28/ In 1930 some 435,800 girls, representing 4.2 per cent of the female
labor force, lived in factory dormitories. (Taeuber, op. cit., pp. 87,
116.)

29/ The proportion of women ever married by age was:

Age Shi (Towns and Cities) Gun (Small Towns and Villages)
Group 1920 1935 Ratio 1920 1935 Ratio

15-19 13.5 5.7 2.4 18.9 8.7 2.2

20-24 60.6 48.4 1.3 70.9 59.8 1.2

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 365

Age Shi (Towns and Cities) Gun (Small Towns and Villages)
Group 1920 1935 Ratio 1920 1935 Ratio

25-29 86.3 85.4 1.0 92.0 91.1 1.0

From: Taeuber, op. cit., p. 211.

30/ Between 1878-82 and 1913-17, land productivity in Japan rose by 80

per cent and labor productivity in agriculture by 136 per cent. See:
Ohkawa, Kazushi, and Henry Rosovsky. aThe Role of Agriculture in
Modern Japanese Economic Development." Economic Development
and Cultural Change 9(1, part 2), Oct. 1960. P. 46.

31/ When the urban sector is small and the farm sector large, a rural-
urban migratory stream that is big from the standpoint of cities will
be insignificant from the standpoint of the countryside. See: Davis,
K. aInternal Migration and Urbanization in Relation to Economic
Development," loc. cit. However, it should be clear that there are
other variables. One is the magnitude of the rural natural increase,
which is greater today in underdeveloped countries than it was in
nineteenth century Europe. This means that, given the same rural-
urban distribution of the population, the out-migration from agricul-
ture has a greater burden to carry in currently underdeveloped
countries. See: Davis, K. aUrbanization in India: Past and Future."
Turner, Roy, Editor. India's Urban Future. Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1962.

32/ Stys, W. aThe Influence of Economic Conditions on the Fertility of

Peasant Women." Population Studies 11(2):136-148. Nov. 1957. The
change is graphically shown, p. 148, by two maps of the farms in the
area at the beginning and at the end of the period.

33/ My estimate based on: Connell, K. H. The Population of Ireland,

1750-1845. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1950. Pp. 163-164.
34/ Vance, Rupert B. All These People. Chapel Hill, University of North
Carolina Press, 1945. P. 164.

35/ Per-acre productivity rose early in the economic transformation be-

cause of shifts in land-use, better methods and instruments of til-
lage, and higher-yielding types of plants and animals. Thus aduring
the eighteenth century the traditional bias of Irish agriculture to-
wards grazing had shifted to tillage," methods of tillage were stead-
ily improved; and the potato, introduced in the sixteenth century and
yielding more calories per acre than any other plant, became the
main food crop. See: Green, E. R. R. aAgriculture." P. 90 in:
Edwards, R. Dudley, and T. D. Williams, Editors. The Great Fam-
ine. New York, New York University Press, 1957. Also, Connell,
op. cit., pp. 136, 158-159.

36/ E. g., Tsarist Russia, China between the two world wars, Japan in
1940, Bulgaria, and India. See in particular: Skinner, G. Wm. aA
Study in Miniature of Chinese Population." Population Studies 5(2):
98-103. Nov. 1951; United Nations. The Mysore Population Study.
New York, 1961. P. 86; Okazaki, A. Investigation on Differential
Fertility. Japan, Welfare Ministry, Institute of Population Problems,
Research Data, B, No. 2. Additional references, with tabular data
for Germany and China, are in: Stys, op. cit., pp. 143-144.

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All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
366

37/ For evidence, references, and discussion, see: Davis, K., and J.
Blake. "Social Structure and Fertility: An Analytic Framework."
Economic Development and Cultural Change 4(3):214-218. April
1956.

38/ Honohan believes that the famine created "in the minds of the people
a hard-headed and somewhat irrational scepticism in regard to the
prospects and permanence of material betterment in Ireland, and
that "a strong religious faith" led to resistance to trends that de-
veloped elsewhere. (W. A. Honohan. "The Population of Ireland."
Journal of the Institute of Actuaries 86(1, 372):30-49, 1960. Pp. 48-
49.) He does not explain, however, why a famine should have an ef-
fect different in Ireland from the effect in India, why this attitude
should last for a century, or why the Irish should happen to have such
a strong religious faith. If the Irish were hard-headedly sceptical
about future prospects in Ireland, why were they not also sceptical
about the Roman clergy?

39/ Connell, op. cit., p. 39.

40/ Honohan, op. cit., p. 37.

41/ Austria, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain. France is omitted because

of some question about its being a 'Catholic country."

42/ Honohan, op. cit., p. 42.

43/ Glass, David V. 'Malthus and the Limitation of Population Growth."

In: Glass, D. V., Editor. Introduction to Malthus. New York, Wiley,
1953. Pp. 35-37.

44/ Honohan, op. cit., p. 39.

CURRENT FERTILITY EXPEC- Actual fertility and the future fertil-

TATIONS OF MARRIED ity expectations of Am rican couples
COUPLES IN THE in the childbearing years are being
UNITED STATES followed by a time-series project con-
ducted at the Population Studies Center
of The University of Michigan. In the January 1963 issue of Population
Index this project was described in detail./1

This, the second report, consists of results based on interviews taken

from a national sample in three separate studies conducted by the Survey
Research Center of The University of Michigan in May, August, and
November 1962. The cases from all three are combined to get a com-
posite picture for the year 1962. A total of 1402 interviews were taken
with couples where the wife was less than 40 years old and living with
her husband. Approximately half the respondents were male and half,
female. These interviews were merged for this report, as in the first
one, as representing in general the couples' fertility expectations. /2.
The questions asked to obtain information on number of births and ex-
pected family size are similar to those in the 1955 and 1960 Growth of
American Family (GAF) studies,/3 and thus it is possible to compare
these series to locate possible trends, and to test past predictions.

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