MAaniAGE RATE. lu most civilized countries the marriage rate, like the death rate and the birth rate, is slowly declining. With the im provement of medical knowledge and the intro duction of sanitary measures the average dura tion of human life tends to rise, approaching nearer and nearer to the normal limit mentioned by the Psalmist. in consequence, the number of births requisite to produce a given of adults tends to decrease. There is little doubt that the food supply and the oilier necessaries a ml comforts of life tend to increase, but much if not most of this increase is absorbed in advanc ing the standard of comfort. As fewer births are needed to maintain or moderately to increase the so fewer marriages are needed to accomplish the same. end.
In some States or countries the marriage rate obtained by comparing the number of marriages with the total population has not declined. Even in them, however, when the more accurate ratio, that between the marriages and the adult population, or better yet the adult unmarried population, is computed, it is usually found that the marriage rate has declined. The States lacks marriage statistics obtained through registration, and in this, as in other fields of vital statistics, is compelled to rely upon infer ences derived from the census. Only for the last two censuses, those of 1890 and 1900, has infor mation on this subject been afforded. Of all persons in the United States rather more than one-third (36.5 per cent.) are married; about 1 in 20 (5.1 per cent.) are widowed; and 3 in 1000 (0.3) are divorced, the remainder, not quite three-fifths (57.9 per cent.), being single. The proportion of each of these classes, except the last, has increased in the last ten years: the married from 35.7 per cent., the widowed from 4.7 per cent., and the divorced from 0.2 per cent. This seems contrary to the general tendency al ready mentioned. A part of this change is due to the decreasing proportion of children and in consequence the increasing proportion of per Sons of marriageable age. Yet even when at
tention is confined to the population over fif teen years of age, the proportion of married in the United States slightly increased from 55.3 per cent. in 1S90 to 55.5 in 1900. Examination of the figures for conjugal condition by sex and age shows that this slight increase in the per cent. married was confined to the periods of early adult life, the per cent. of married persons among men twenty to twenty-four years of age having risen from 18.9 in 1890 to 21.6 in 1900, and the per cent. of married females from fif teen to nineteen years of age having increased from 9.5 in 1S90 to 10.9 in 1900. The per cent. of married persons, male or female, at each later age was less in 1900 than in 1890, with an insignificant exception for women forty-five to sixty-four years of age, where the proportion of married was substantially the same at the two censuses. This increase in early marriages is probably an index of the unusual prosperity of the United States during the few years imme diately preceding the Twelfth Census, and the figures do not warrant the belief that the pro portion of married persons in the 'United States is likely to increase.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For English figures and reBibliography. For English figures and re- sults William Farr's Vital Statistics (1885) and Arthur Newsholme's Elements of Vital Statistics ( 2d ed., 1899 ) should be consulted. The supplement to the Fifty-ninth Annual Report of the Registrar General gives a summary and analysis of recent official figures (1881-90), and is especially good on the death rate of occupations (1890-92). The fullest and most critical summary of results for the leading countries will be found in Wester gaard's Lehre von der Mortalitat and Jlorbilitiit (241 ed., 1901). American statistics in this field are weak and defective, the best sources of in formation being the volumes of the United States Census and the annual registration reports of a few States, especially Michigan, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island,