Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/243

is born, and this time the birth-rate is 25 per cent. and so on for the twenty years or so while the original couple are fertile and before the new generation gets paired off and starts reproducing. Here you see the steady decline of the birth-rate as a result of the steady increase of the population.

If, contrariwise, every one of these infants had died at or within a year of birth the birth-rate would have remained high, at 50 per cent. of the total population but the total population, of the island would have remained stationary. Birth-rates, therefore, must always not only be "corrected" but also presented in correlation with death-rates and survival rates of young people up to at least 20 years of age. Moreover, as the death-rate of old people is postponed, and the old live longer, so also is the apparent birth-rate in proportion to the total population sent down. Consideration of vital statistics and their interpretation is not an integral part of the main theme of this book, so these few illustrative examples should suffice to show the fallacy of the "race suicide" argument which bases its outcry on a low birth-rate alone. Among the many writers. who have dealt with the birth-rate aspect