In the north and west of the United
States the decline has been regular, while in the south the change has
been less regular and the decline less marked. A comparison is made
between the proportion of children in the foreign-born population and in
the American. The former was 710 to the latter's 462. In the coloured
population the proportion of children is greater than in the
corresponding white population.

There can be no doubt whatever that, from the eighteenth century to the
twentieth, there has been a steady decrease in the size of the American
family. Franklin, in the eighteenth century, estimated that the average
number of children to a married couple was eight; genealogical records
show that, while in the seventeenth century it was nearly seven, it was
over six at the end of the eighteenth century. Since then, as Engelmann
and others have shown, there has been a steady decrease in the size of
the family; in the earlier years of the nineteenth century there were
between four and five children to each marriage, while by the end of the
century the number of children had fallen to between four and but little
over one. Engelmann finds that there is but a very trifling difference
in this respect between the upper and the lower social classes; the
average for the labouring classes at St. Louis he finds to be about two,
and for the higher classes a little less. It is among the foreign-born
population, and among those of foreign parents, that the larger families
are found; thus Kuczynski, by analysing the census, finds that in
Massachusetts the average number of children to each married woman among
the American-born of all social classes is 2.7, while among the
foreign-born of all social classes it is 4.5. Moreover, sterility is
much more frequent among American women than among foreign women in
America. Among various groups in Boston, St. Louis, and elsewhere it
varies between 20 and 23 per cent, and in some smaller groups is even
considerably higher, while among the foreign-born it is only 13 per
cent. The net result is that the general natality of the United States
at the present day is about equal to that of France, but that, when we
analyse the facts, the fertility of the old native-born American
population of mainly Anglo-Saxon origin is found to be lower than that
of France. This element, therefore, is rapidly dwindling away in the
United States. The general level of the birth-rate is maintained by the
foreign im