Marriage-Rate

MARRIAGE-RATE. The marriage-rate is generally ex pressed in terms of the number of persons married in any given population to each thousand of that population in a year. Thus if in a population of 1,250,000 there were I0,000 marriages in a year, the marriage-rate for that year would be 16.o—this rate being obtained by multiplying the number of marriages by two and dividing by 1,250,00o. It is, of course, obvious that the rate will be affected by the proportion of marriageable people in the population under review, and that a population with an unusually high proportion of children under 15 years of age, or an unusually large proportion already married would, presumably, show a lower marriage-rate than would a population normally constituted as to age and marital condition. For this reason, it is often urged that a truer measure is obtained by relating the rate, not to the entire population, but to the single, divorced and widowed who are of marriageable age. For anyone but the vital or social statistician, however, the ordinary marriage rate will suffice.

Factors Affecting the Rate.—There are a variety of factors, social and economic, which affect the marriage-rate in greater or lesser degree ; habit and custom, economic prosperity or adversity, housing facilities or their lack, or some such rare disturbing ele ment as the World War. This last caused the marriage-rate in England and Wales to rise suddenly from 15.7 and 15.9 in the years 1913 and 1914 respectively to 19.4 in 1915, to fall to 13.8 in 1917 and to rise to the unprecedented figure of 20.2 in 192o.

Apart from such a cataclysmic upheaval, the marriage-rate is not subject to violent changes, and, in the course of the last half century shows a much smaller variation than is to be found in the birth and death rates. In the following table are given the marriage-rates recorded in certain European countries in the years 1876, 1901, 1913 and 1926 (or 1925).

It will be seen that in 1876 the extreme range shown by these eleven countries in the marriage-rate was from 14.2 in Sweden to 17.1 in Denmark, a range of 2.9. In 1901 the range was from 12.1 in Sweden to 17.4 in Belgium or of 5.3; in 1913 it was from 11.8 in Sweden to 16.o in Belgium or 4.2 and in 1926 from 11.4

in Norway to 19.2 in Belgium or 7.8. The course of the rate is curiously varied; from 1876 to 1901 every country showed a de cline more or less marked except Belgium which, from having one of the lowest marriage-rates in 1876, rose to having the high est in 1901. From 1901 to 1913 Denmark, Italy, Netherlands and Scotland show slight increases; in England and Wales there was no change, while the other countries had some decline. Finally, the 1926 rate shows very marked recovery in Belgium and France, a smaller advance in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland, no 17.1 in the birth-rate: a rise of 1.5% in the marriage-rate from 1901 to 1913, with a fall of 13.5% in the birth-rate, a fall in the marriage-rate from 1913 to 1926 of 9.9% while the birth-rate fell 18%.

That the experience of Great Britain was common to the other countries dealt with in the first table is shown by the table below, in which are given the changes in the percentage rise or fall of the marriage and birth rates between the three periods 1876 190I; 1901-1913, and 1913-1926.

Marriage and Birth-rate.

The correlation between the marriage and the birth-rate which was once accepted as being in the nature of things is no longer so indisputable. A comparison of the two will show that the birth-rate no longer reflects the marriage-rate in most Western countries, and that this is particu larly the case in those which are considered to be in the forefront as regards their progress. One or two examples will amply dem onstrate this fact. During the quarter-century from 1876 to 1901, the marriage-rate in England and Wales showed a decline of 3.6%, -while the fall in the birth-rate for the same period was no less than 21.5% or about six times as great. Between 1901 and 1913, as a reference to the first table will show, the marriage-rate remained unchanged, but in that period the birth-rate fell from 28.5 to 23.8 or by no less than 16.5%. Finally, from the year 1913 to 1926 there was a further fall of the marriage-rate, more marked than in the first 25 years of the period under review, amounting to io%; the birth-rate, however, fell by no less than 25%.