Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 288, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1918 — German Birth Rate Shows a Drop of Forty Per Cent Since Beginning of War [ARTICLE]

German Birth Rate Shows a Drop of Forty Per Cent Since Beginning of War

The birth rate in Germany for 1916 fell off 40 per cent from the figures for the year 1913, according to Dr. Charles Greene Cumston of the University of Geneva, writing in the New York Medical Journal. Doctor Cumston’s figures are taken from a report prepared by the intelligence department of the local government board .of Switzerland. Doctor Cumston says in part: “During the war there has been a heavy fall in the German birth rate. The first three years of the war alone reduced by more than 2,000,000 the number of Infants who would have been born had peace prevailed. I would add that the infantile death rate has been kept well down, but is 50 per cent higher than in England. The birth rate, which had risen from 36.1 per 1,000 inhabitants in the decade 1841-1850, to 39.1 In the period 18711880, fell in the succeeding decades to 36.8, 36.1 and 31.9. The rate for the last year of the decade 1901-1910 was 30 per 1,000 inhabitants, and the continuance of the fall brought the rate as low as 28.3 in 1912. In 1913 there were 1,839.000 live births. In Germany, in 1916, there were only 1,103,000, a decrease of 40 per cent as compared with 1913.”