Search

The Own Children Method (OCM) is an indirect procedure for deriving age-specific fertility rates and total fertility from children living with their mothers at a census or survey. The method was designed primarily for the calculation of overall fertility, although there are variants that allow the calculation of marital fertility. In this paper we argue that the standard variants for calculating marital fertility can produce misleading results and require strong assumptions, particularly when applied to social or spatial subgroups. We present two new variants of the method for calculating marital fertility: the first of these allows for the presence of non-marital fertility and the second also permits the more robust calculation of rates for social subgroups of the population. We illustrate and test these using full-count census data for England and Wales in 1911. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use linked census data from England and Wales to investigate whether having a large number of siblings leads to lower educational attainment. There is a large literature suggesting that with large sibship size, parental resources will be diluted and this, in turn, will lead to lower educational attainment. Using twin births and the sex composition of the sibling group as instrumental variables, we find that the evidence of a family size effect on educational attainment is rather uncertain. Similar results are obtained when we use occupational attainment as the dependent variable. We also demonstrate the confounding of birth order and family size effects, and show that an adjusted birth order index proposed by Booth and Kee provides an effective solution to this estimation problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second part of this paper we take up some of the issues that were raised in the first, and suggest some explanations for the regularities identified in the pattern of infant- mortality decline. We begin by considering contemporary analyses of the infant- mortality problems especially under the headings of sanitary conditions and maternal care. We also deal with the relationships between fertility decline, improvements in women's education and living standards, and the decline of infant mortality. In the final section we provide an extensive summary and discussion of the whole paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this paper is to assess how far developments in the labour market can help to explain the fluctuations in births which have been recorded in England and Wales between 1952 and 1980. We examine separately the period rate of women from each of the first four parities proceeding to another birth. Our analysis shows that different birth orders respond differently to economic variables, and that women of different ages but the same parity respond differently. We have found that growing real wages for both men and women tend to deter older parents from adding to existing families. During the early stages of family building, births are inhibited by labour markets favourable to women. But conditions in the labour market for men have the opposite effect on early breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of levels of life expectancy and their patterns of change among six socio-economically differentiated sub-populations of England and Wales for the period 1851-1911. Differences in mortality levels among these sub-groups and their rates of change are analyzed with respect to three groups of explanatory variables, viz., environmental, stratification and demographic variables. Their relative importance for different periods is assessed and discussed. The findings show consistency with two previous studies, which have suggested that medical advances had little effect on the increase in life expectancy during the second half of the nineteenth century. The present paper supports the results of one study in that public health measures affected life expectancies earlier, while subsequently, the increase in standards of living was more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main trend in urban/rural migration is a continuous gain, in net terms, of towns from villages and large cities. But this is a result of two distinct migration streams associated with the process of family formation. While before marriage there is positive net migration from villages to both large cities and towns (and from large cities towards towns), after marriage there is a tendency for couples to move towards villages. This is explained by the desire of families, particularly those belonging to the middle class to move out of the urban centres to better accommodation in smaller communities. Considerable variations in migrations within and into regions are observed. These reflect the continuation of long-term trends in internal migration (as described in Part I of this paper) in particular, population dispersal from Greater London and larger distance migration into the Southern and Eastern regions. Some social characteristics of migrants and non-migrants are compared. Associations between the intensity of internal migration on the one hand, and occupational status, education, social mobility and family size on the other are observed. An attempt is made to assess the extent of migration associated with the marriage process. Although this process increases mobility, its relative contribution to total adult mobility appears to be only slight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically discusses recent attempts to estimate long-term trends in the stillbirth rate for England and Wales. It assesses the available historical evidence for the level of late-fetal mortality, drawing especially on examples from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. A theoretical fetal–infant life table for a high-mortality population is also outlined as a means of analysing the relationship between segments of the conception-to-first-birthday mortality curve. Finally, new estimates of the stillbirth rate for England and Wales are proposed, based on variations in the early neonatal and maternal mortality rates during the 1930s. These estimates are substantially lower than the earlier estimates and are more in keeping with the available evidence from northern Europe. The implications of the revised estimates for interpretations of historical changes in mortality patterns are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to two ongoing debates among demographers. One deals with the immediate and deferred health effects of childbearing in the past, and the other with competing explanations--the frailty and insult accumulation hypotheses--for differences in individual health later in life. The study population consists of working women who lived at four locales in England and Wales in parts of the period 1778-1929 and who were under observation for incapacitating sickness during and after their childbearing years. Mothers within the study population are contrasted with a comparison group made up principally of non-mothers. The mothers began their reproductive careers with an advantage in health that was especially evident in the duration of sickness episodes. Even though individual births were less hazardous than individual sicknesses at the same ages, the cumulative effect of childbearing appears to have eroded the mothers' advantage. By ages 50-74 the mothers resembled the comparison group in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed account of fertility levels and trends in England and Wales since 1938, with a briefer coverage of a much longer time-span. The paper is concerned both with the measurement of fertility and with understanding the observed fertility behaviour. We lament and correct the failure of demographers to apply measurement tools available since the 1950s to the analysis of fertility in England and Wales, with a particular emphasis on adjustment of period measures and period parity progression ratios and show how some of the grosser errors of analysis and interpretation might have been avoided by earlier use of these approaches. We also relate these estimates to more recent ones. Once a clearer account of trends has been established, the paper goes on to reinterpret and explain the baby boom and baby bust. The conclusion looks at future prospects for fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the data on occupational and social class mortality published decennially for England and Wales are used to examine the trend in the size of class differentials in mortality from 1921 to 1972 for adult men, married women and infants. Using summary measures which take into account changes in the relative sizes of the social classes over time, it was found that absolute inequality in mortality increased among adult men and married women during the 1950s and 1960s and relative inequality increased for all three groups. Two widely recognized potential sources of error, changes in the occupational composition of the social classes over time, and discrepancies between the numerators and denominators of occupation-specific death rates are examined to determine their effect on the trend indicated, and the initial findings are confirmed. Finally, the possible causes and implications of rising inequality coincident with declining overall levels of mortality, relative affluence, and the uniform availability of basic medical services to all socio-economic sub-groups of the population are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with two kinds of theoretical approach to the explanation of fertility control during the nineteenth century and considers two forms of empirical analysis. Explanations which emphasize the role of the changing structural context (industrialization and urbanization for example) are contrasted with those which make use of behavioural interpretations in which the decision-making of individual couples is paramount. In the empirical analyses, data for the English and Welsh registration districts in 1861 and 1891 are employed in the first instance and, secondly, an attempt is made to estimate social-class-specific marital fertility rates for three English towns between 1851 and 1871 by using data from the census enumerators' books. The results of these analyses confirm the complexity of the processes involved in the secular decline of marital fertility and suggest the importance of the collective biography approach for the study of individuals' motivations and behaviour patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines an interpretation of the modern rise of population based on experience of England and Wales and examines the credibility of this interpretation in the light of the different circumstances which existed in four other European countries: Sweden, France, Ireland and Hungary. It suggests that it is desirable to consider the modern rise of population as a whole, and to examine the post-registration period before turning to the uncertainties of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using this approach in England and Wales the authors conclude that population growth was not influenced by improved sanitation before about 1870 or by specific medical measures before the introduction of the sulphonamides in 1935. They attribute the rise of population in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to a decline of mortality which resulted from improvement in diet. The grounds for this conclusion are threefold: there was a large increase in food production; none of the alternative explanations is adequate; and in the conditions which existed at the beginning of the eighteenth century improvement in diet was a necessary condition for a prolonged expansion of population. The basis of these assertions is discussed at some length. The data for the four other countries, although less complete, are consistent with this interpretation. There is no reason to believe that medical measures or improved hygiene were elsewhere effective earlier than in England and Wales, and, with some differences in timing, advances in agriculture occurred throughout Europe from the seventeenth century. The fact that the decline of mortality and improvement in food supplies preceded industrialization in Sweden, and probably in Ireland, suggests that the initial phase of population growth was not dependent on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years several writers have drawn attention to the dangers of relying upon "calendar year" reproduction rates, such as the conventional net reproduction rate, as indicators of future population prospects. The synthesis considered in the present paper is of the births to generations of women, and is thus free from these objections. In brief the defence of an analysis limited to females in England and Wales today is based on the shrinking proportions of females to males at the younger ages in the unmarried population and one may suppose, the decreasing dependence of the proportions of women marrying on the availability of potential husbands. In the simplest case, the definition was in terms of mortality and fertility rates, progressing to mortality, marriage and legitimate and illegitimate fertility rates and, if the pendulum had not swung away from this approach, no doubt further complexity would have been added introducing considerations of widowhood, divorce and re-marriage and distinguishing duration of marriage as an additional factor in fertility rates.

The article discusses the reasons for the rapid decline of infant mortality at the very beginning of the twentieth century in England and Wales. It has two main objectives. A detailed demographic analysis of the pattern of infant mortality variation over time and through space is presented by type of environment, and social class. This analysis corrects certain misconceptions about the form of infant mortality decline. In the second part we consider a number of possible causes of the decline and thereby provide a means of evaluating the relative importance of each contributory factor in the light of the demographic analysis. The methods employed are simple and exploratory, since the intention is to lay foundations for future research.

This article presents a study to find the average age at first marriage for women in mid-nineteenth century in England and Wales. For this study the 1861 Census was preferred to that of 1851 as it could he expected to be more accurate and as it deals with marriage behavior from the period for which comparison can he made with the Registrar General's figures for England and Wales as a whole. Results were also derived for the 1851 census which were generally very similar, except that mean age at marriage for virtually all counties was estimated as being slightly higher. A crude indicator of life expectancy by county for 1861 was obtained by calculating infant mortality from the Registrar General's Report. The Spearman rank order correlation coefficient between infant mortality and mean age at marriage was -0.58, not surprising, given the inverse association between urbanization and age at marriage. If this association was typical of earlier times, as seems probable, then this would have weakened the effect on population growth of falls in age at marriage, especially at the levels of mortality generally prevailing during the classic Industrial Revolution period. The patterns of association between urbanization, mortality and age at marriage seem to be consistent with the opinion expressed and Ireland that changes in age at marriage probably did not play a major role in generating population growth during the period before 1850.

One of the prime needs of the physical planner is to know how many households he must plan for. Population forecasting is itself a complicated process which, in England and Wales, has only been undertaken comprehensively for local authority areas. This article seeks to discuss that population forecasting can usefully be undertaken in spite of the limitations of the basic data. The author stresses that the wide variations in the characteristics of local populations render the exercise vital, even when national household size appears likely to remain unchanged.

The article discusses a study on fertility of teachers in England and Wales, Great Britain. A sample of teachers differs from a population sample as it may be reduced not only by death but also by other factors which may have a direct bearing on fertility, such as health or change of occupation. In order to compare the fertility of teachers with other occupational groups, the Family Census material was used. The two samples are not entirely identical. The Family Census included divorced and widowed women provided they were divorced or widowed after their 45th birthday. The analysis which follows the pattern set by the Family census' of 1946 describes fertility in terms of numbers of live-born children per married male teacher by marriage cohort and duration of marriage. The data were collected partly by postal questionnaire and partly by personal interview. The postal and interview data were compared and showed no significant difference with respect to the factors under discussion in the present study and only minor differences for other factors.

Recent substantial declines in first marriage in Western countries have been accompanied by increases in the average age at first marriage. Since the period proportion ever marrying, PEM, is sensitive to cohort tempo changes, the recent fall in the PEM may simply reflect cohort delays in marriage. The importance of timing factors is examined in the light of twentieth-century experience of first marriage in England and Wales and the USA. Using a variant of the Timing Index developed in research on fertility, we measure cohort timing effects for marriage and calculate an adjusted PEM. After examining twentieth-century trends in nuptiality for men and women, we find substantial tempo effects on the period PEM. Adjusted PEM values show a real decline in marriage for cohorts, but that decline is considerably smaller than the one shown by the unadjusted figures. This is especially true for England and Wales, where the decline in marriage was much greater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much effort has been expended in analysing a small sample of parish registers to produce national estimates of infant mortality for the period 1570-1840. However, in an age when inter-parish variations in infant mortality were considerable, national trends often obscured local and regional differences. By analysing data from the initial years of Civil Registration (1839-1846) together with infant mortality rates from a range of parishes, it is possible to assess the extent of variation and change in England and Wales during the period 1580-1840. The geographical variations in infant mortality and the age structure of infant deaths were sufficient to suggest that the most: important influence on whether infants survived was disease environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that there have been large declines in the proportion of elderly people living in intergenerational households. Much less is known about trends in the proportion of adult children living with elderly parents. Here I show a large decline between 1981 and 1991 in the proportion of mid-life adults living with an elderly parent or parent-in-law in England and Wales. Declines in co-residence were higher among more advantaged groups so that the characteristics of intergenerational households were less favorable in 1991 than in 1981. Analysis of another data set, including information on the survival of parents, showed that associations between co-variates and co-residence are similar in models applied to all mid-life adults and only to those with a living parent. These changes suggest a continuing trend towards residential independence as a preferred option, with those unable to attain or maintain this coming to represent a more disadvantaged group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes marital status for cohorts of men and women born in England and Wales between 1900 and 1945. Marital status life tables, which follow a real or synthetic birth cohort through life and the marital statuses of "never" married, "presently married", "widowed" and "divorced" reflect observed marriage, divorce and mortality behavior and provide a detailed record of a cohort's experience. The result is that cohorts deviate substantially from the "European pattern" of late marriage and high proportions never marrying. Also, dramatic rise in divorce has taken place and one marriage out of four ends in divorce. The aftermath of World War II and divorce reform legislation were both associated with sharp increases in period divorce rates. The magnitude and suddenness of those declines was dramatic, leading to speculation that the traditional European marriage pattern had been largely abandoned. The proportions ever married and the modal age at first marriage had changed substantially in female cohorts, whereas for males the only significant change was a decline in the age at first marriage. As marriage and divorce are closely related, they are best analyzed in the context of a single, comprehensive model.

The article focuses on a representative sample of national divorce records of the year 1979 and analyzes its characteristics according to the social class and socio-economic position of the husband in England and Wales. Demographic variables such as ages at marriage and divorce, duration of marriage, previous marital status, family size and the presence of a pre-maritally conceived child are investigated for social class and socio-economic differentials. Furthermore, an age standardized measure; the "standardized divorce ration" is used to summarize the relative rates of divorce for the different social classes and socio-economic groups. Age of the wife at marriage and duration of marriage are known to influence the chance of divorce. The husband' age at divorce serves as a proxy variable for both marriage duration and wife's age at marriage, therefore, divorce rates were standardized for this variable. The median ages at divorce for husbands in the different occupations do not vary very markedly, when compared to the variations in the standardized divorce ratios. This suggests that age at divorce may not be the best variable - even though it is the only one available - on which to standardize.

This article examines the ability of "Laslett's courtship hypothesis" to explain variations in illegitimate fertility in urban districts of England and Wales in 1911. Laslett's hypothesis can be given a fairly stiff test by using statistics from the census of 1911 to perform a multiple regression analysis. Other variables can be controlled, whereas Laslett has not so far undertaken a multivariate analysis. Moreover, the test is demanding because the inverse relationship between age at marriage and illegitimacy is to be examined in a cross-section, whereas Laslett stresses a time-series relation, and because the statistics relate to a year very near the end of Laslett's period. Statistics from the Census of England and Wales of 1911 provide an unusually good source for the study of historical fertility. The Registrar General produced fertility information for administrative districts, whereas in previous censuses statistics were available only for registration districts. Also, for the first time a wealth of information was made available on socio-econornjc conditions for areas as small as Urban Districts. This makes it possible to test hypotheses about illegitimacy in a multivariate framework with a large number of degrees of freedom.

The article reports that in England and Wales there has been a general rise in marriage rates from 1950 until the mid-1960, followed by considerable fluctuations, and a dramatic fall since the early 1970's. These movements have generally been explained in terms of demographic phenomena such as "the marriage squeeze." In order to explain the movement of marriage rates and marriages over the post-war period in Britain it is necessary to consider the factors influencing the decision to marry. Marriage may be viewed as a partnership whose aim is to maximize, subject to certain production constraints, the expected well-being of the couple. An important source of this well-being is the raising of children, as well as mutual love and companionship. These cannot be purchased nor provided by oneself, so, in economic terms, the man's and woman's inputs in providing these satisfactions are complementary. An economic model of the decision to marry has been developed by sociologist Gary Becker and is now part of the new home economics. From it one can deduce that the propensity to marry is a function of the relative earning capacities of men and women, the relative scarcity of unmarried persons of the opposite sex and real income. The income elasticity of marriage is only found to be significant among men below age 25 and women below age 20, and it increases as one moves down the age distribution.

A model for forecasting fertility is proposed in which an attempt is made to represent the cyclical fluctuations in fertility typical of developed societies. R. A. Easterlin has put forward the hypothesis that relative affluence, i.e. tension between material aspirations and resources, is an important determinant of fertility behaviour. Relative cohort size in turn affects relative affluence, because the size of a cohort influences its competitive position in the labour market. However, predictions based on relative cohort size alone neglect other sources of periodic fluctuations in fertility, such as those arising from generational cycles. A periodic component which expresses fertility variations as a direct function of time is, therefore, included in this model. A time series of age-specific fertility rates and population estimates for England and Wales and for Greater London is used to assess the relationship between fertility, relative cohort size, and the periodic time function. There is evidence of significant cyclic effects and some support for the Easterlin hypothesis in that the fertility of younger age groups is inversely related to the relative size of older cohorts. Projections are made of the future trend in total fertility assuming. a continuation of the observed relationship. Use of different assumed periodicities permits the generation of variant projections of fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is informed that nuptiality may be characterized by its temporal age pattern and by its level as indicated by the proportions of persons who ever marry. The two characteristics are often related in practice, though they are not necessarily interdependent. A computerized system simulating the nuptiality experience of a hypothetical cohort has been developed at the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys with the intention of investigating trends in cohort nuptiality in England and Wales. This system, called GENMAR, has five main programmes dealing with first marriages, the effects of changes in mortality on nuptiality measures, divorce, re-marriage, and marital status distributions. This article summarizes the results of the application of the first programme to data on first marriages of persons under the age of 50 years in England and Wales born in every single year since 1900. The programme starts with a hypothetical cohort of 100,000 persons of either sex in a closed population, and follows them through the nuptial span which is defined as extending from a person's 16th to his 50th birthday. There are two major loops in the main programme: an outer loop increments on sex, while an inner loop increments on year of birth. For any given birth cohort, there are two sub routines: the first constructs a complete gross nuptiality table, and the second calculates an abridged gross nuptiality table.

It is well known that the early official vital registration data for England and Wales are not complete. Estimates are available of the magnitude of under-registration of births for England and Wales as a whole, but it is highly unlikely that under-registration was uniform over all counties. This article presents new estimates of the degree of birth under-registration for each of the 45 constituent registration counties of England and Wales from 1841 to 1910. The method employed involves the technique of reverse projection, using a characteristic model life table, which is defined for each county by its registered childhood mortality. Adjustments are made for the effects of non-stationarity and net migration. The variation in under-registration across counties is shown to be of considerable magnitude, and a particularly interesting pattern of under-registration and over-registration emerges for the counties of the London, England region. In 1841-50, the degree of under-registration in London was very close to that of England and Wales as a whole. The same is the case for 1851-60. However, by 1861-70 the calculated adjustment factor for the county of London indicates an apparent over-registration of births.

The article presents figures show that the size of the domestic group in England and Wales did begin to fall sharply in 1891 and has not ceased to fall since that time. It is true to say that the whole period 1891-1961 elapsed before the decline reached the full one-third mentioned in the original article. Nevertheless the level reached in 1911 was only very slightly lower than that of 1861, and the rate of fall was markedly greater after that date than before it, the descent in the fifty years 1911-1961 was only 4% less than in the seventy years 1891-1961. Some of the variation between count and count was undoubtedly due to changes in the definition of the domestic group used by the census takers, the rise to a peak in 1851 took place when occupier replaced family, and the sharp fall in 1861 when lodgers were first officially counted as occupiers. The changes which went on between the second and the fourth decades of the twentieth century are much more likely to have been wholly due to alterations in the actual composition of the domestic group, and they appear to represent its final and definitive transformation.

An attempt to study regional patterns of urbanization in England and Wales has been undertaken for the period 1851-1951. Some of the problems that were involved and some of the results obtained are described in this article. A classification of all the counties in England and Wales into rural and urban has been used in connection with a study of the changing patterns of rural/urban and urban/suburban migration in England and Wales. The index that has been used in this study as a basis for these classifications was the percentage of adult males occupied in agricultural occupations. Every county was classified as rural or urban, according to its percentage engaged in agricultural occupations, for each of the census years 1851-1951. This eventually enabled an examination of the geographical patterns of urbanization in England and Wales since 1851 to 1951 be carried out. Then several alternative statistical rural/urban classifications were made for 1951, using in each a different percentage of adult males engaged in agriculture as the dividing line between rural and urban counties.

The history of public health changes is taken forward from 1900 to 1950. This was a period of important development in a population in which most of the adult members had at the outset of the period experienced compulsory primary education; when the full effects of industrial development had made their mark on the nation's health and, at last, on the public conscience; when the force of social and economic factors in producing and perpetuating disease was becoming appreciated; and when community responsibility for the health and welfare of the individual was becoming accepted. Not surprisingly, great improvements were made in the scope of preventive and curative services and in their accessibility. But the most important factor in the improvement of the national health was the steady rise in the level of living of the population, especially during the last two decades of the period. This article discusses several issues related to public health changes in England and Wales. Among the main contributions to the progress of public health have been (1) compulsory primary education which has enabled the population to absorb health education and to apply the simple truths preached by the public health pioneers of the nineteenth century (2) the reduction of poverty and the concomitant improvement in nutrition and in the provision of other material needs; etc.

This article examines the reasons for the decline of mortality in England and Wales during the nineteenth century. Five diseases or disease groups accounted for almost the whole of the reduction in mortality between 1851-1860 and 1891-1900. In order of their relative importance, the influences responsible for the decline were: rising standard of living, hygienic changes introduced by the sanitary reformers, and favorable trend in the relationship between infectious agent and human host.

It is informed that in view of the widespread post-war interest in problems of marriage breakdown, it is surprising that so little is known of the demographic and sociological aspects of divorce in England and Wales. Since there had appeared for some time to be a need for mote information, the members of the Population Investigation Committee decided to initiate a statistical inquiry into marriage and marital breakdown. This study, now in progress, includes an analysis of the published statistics on divorce and also an examination of statistical material extracted from samples of divorce petitions filed in the two census years, 1871 and 1951. Before the middle of the nineteenth century divorce was an extremely expensive and complicated judicial, ecclesiastical and legislative process. The 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, which first made civil divorce available, was not a great legal innovation, its main purpose being merely to simplify, and incidentally to cheapen, procedure so that it might become accessible at need to the rising middle classes. Under the Act a petitioner, who previously had to go first to a civil court, next to the ecclesiastical court and finally to Parliament for a private Act, was able to sue at all stages of divorce in one specially established section of the High Court. The grounds on which the new court could grant decrees were exactly the same as under the former ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

In evaluating the work of earlier writers on population statistics, it is not always easy to make a fair judgment. To see the faults of these writers, without appreciating the difficulties inherent in the situation or period in which they wrote is one danger. Especially so far as the population controversy is concerned, the writers of the period were hampered both by the lack of reliable statistics and by their own, personal, limitations. It is, of course, evident that a lengthy debate on the absolute growth or decline of the population of England and Wales could maintained only because of the inadequacy of contemporary population statistics. England was not singular in this respect it is true that a number of countries had made great progress in the collection of population statistics by the middle of the eighteenth century. Modern statisticians and demographers, fitting together the various sets of statistics dating from earlier periods, can sometimes produce a coherent and reliable account of the size and trend of populations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But to do so requires not only a knowledge of more advanced techniques of demographic analysis than were available in the eighteenth century, but also the background of experience which comes from having, over a long period, reliable and comprehensive population data.

It has long been believed that, although civil registration of births and deaths in England and Wales was prescribed by the 1836 Act and implemented in 1837, birth registration at least was not completely effective for some decades. In making these computations it is obvious that the approach cannot be of the type current in the U.S.A. and Canada, involving a search for the birth certificates of a group of individuals enumerated at a particular census. And any method applied solely to the published data is bound, at best, to be less satisfactory, since it must involve various assumptions, some of which are unverifiable. The main technical question is that of constructing estimates of child populations from the statistics of births and deaths, and the method applied here is that used, though for a different purpose, in connection with the 1911 census of England and Wales. At the same time, provided that births are fairly steady and that infant mortality does not fluctuate violently, the higher "separation factor" used in the above formula would not introduce any significant error.

This article examines the validity of sociologist Gregory King's estimates of the population of England and Wales in 1695 and of its age composition. The estimates are analyzed in the light of the available King's manuscripts. A study of some of the original returns suggests that the population enumerations used by King in constructing his ratios of persons per house, while by no means perfect, were nevertheless reasonable in quality. The account given in the Kashnor manuscript provides some factual basis for King's allocation of houses between London, England the other cities and market towns, and the rest of England and Wales. Demographic ratios for London agree well with those obtained from more extensive contemporary material. For the rest of the nation, such a check is not possible. But analysis of the census returns for England and Wales during the nineteenth century suggests that, at least, the ratios used by King for the other towns and for the villages and hamlets were not unrealistic. How exactly King computed the numbers of towns in his various categories is not known, and the results cannot be tested for reliability until a fresh analysis of hearth-tax statistics has been made.

This concludes the study, the first part of which appeared in vol. I, no. 2 of Population Studies. The present section compares the results of the 1939 analysis with the pattern of occupational differences in fertility shown by the Registrar-General's statistics for 1921 and 1931. The comparison suggests that the proportion of all births contributed by occupations of low fertility has increased in recent years, but that the general pattern of occupational differences in fertility was probably unchanged in 1939. Appendices to the study discuss a number of related topics, including the application of reproduction rates to the measurement of differential fertility, and the problems involved in grouping occupations for fertility analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study to compare the fertility of various sections of the building industry of varying social status. In accordance with the wishes expressed by the Statistics Committee of the Royal Commission on Population, maternities and infant deaths registered in England and Wales in 1939, in respect of which the occupation of the father had been coded and punched, were retabulated by the General Register Office by groups of occupations. A scheme of twenty-six type groups of occupations was adopted. For purposes of analysis it has been found convenient, in general, to aggregate these twenty-six groups in thirteen main types. It is noted that even the thirteen types provide a more detailed occupational analysis than has in general been used for the analysis of differential fertility. The full classification into twenty-six groups makes possible certain special comparisons. It is seen that the differences in age at marriage between occupations follow closely the differences in fertility, as was to be expected. The differences between occupations in the age of the mother at the birth of the first child are greater than the differences in the age at marriage. This is due to the differences in the average marriage duration at the birth of the first child.

The article presents a study on the demographic trends in marriage habits among men and women in England and Wales in the first half of twentieth century. The study has been carried out on the basis of nupitality tables. It further notes that the war of 1914-18 greatly reduced the number of men in certain generations and, therefore, among these men the proportions married were higher thereafter. In the corresponding age groups among women, the married proportions were decreased by the loss of men. These movements were mainly caused by shifts in the marriage probabilities at the younger ages. The pattern of changes differs somewhat between the sexes. Between 1900-02 and 1910-12 the marriage probabilities decreased at all ages under 40 among men, though the only serious decrease took place under age 25. Among women the probability of marriage increased between ages 25 and 35. The decrease in mortality since 1900 has resulted in a proportionately greater increase in the male than in the female survivors according to the life tables. This process has in a sense compensated the greater increase in female than in male nuptiality in the same period.

During 2010-20, period fertility in England and Wales fell to its lowest recorded level. The aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of the decline in period fertility in two dimensions: differentials by the education of a woman's parents (family background) and by a woman's education in relation to that of her parents (intergenerational educational mobility). The analysis finds a substantial decline in fertility in each education group, whether defined by a woman's parents' education alone or by a woman's own education relative to her parents' education. Considering parents' and women's own education together helps differentiate fertility further than analysing either generation's education in isolation. Using these educational mobility groups more clearly shows a narrowing of TFR differentials over the decade, but timing differences persist.

There is increasing concern about the lack of accuracy in population projections at national levels. A common problem has been the systematic underestimation of improvements in mortality, especially at older ages, resulting in projections that are too low. In this paper, we present a method that is based on projecting survivorship rather than mortality, which uses the same data but differs technically. In particular, rather than extrapolating trends in mortality, we use trends in life expectancy to establish a robust statistical relation between changes in life expectancy and survivorship using period life tables. We test the approach on data for England and Wales for the population aged 50 and over, and show that it gives more accurate projections than official projections using the same base data. Using the model to project the population aged 50 and over to 2020, our method suggests nearly 0.6 million more people in this age group than official projections.