RECENT ECONOMIC TRENDS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1956.tb00808.x |
| Date | 01 February 1956 |
| Published date | 01 February 1956 |
RECENT ECONOMIC TRENDS
FERTILITY
CHANGES
IN
SCOTTISH
CITIES
AND
COUNTIES
FOR
the years 1911 and 1931 Dr. Enid Charles has estimated the gross
reproduction rate of Scotland, of each Scottish city and county, and
of
parts of counties,
so
as
to measure differences in fertility within Scot-
land.’ She found that internal fertility differentials fell somewhat
between 1911 and 1931.
In
view of recent changes in demographic
habits, it should be of interest to discover whether and to what extent
this
trend has continued. Statistics of births by age
of
the mother are
available from 1938,
so
that it is no longer necessary to use fertility
data from other countries. The results are currently published for
Scotland as a whole, but the potentially available information on
counties or other subdivisions
of
Scotland has been neither published
nor extracted. While a gross reproduction rate
is
officially calculated
for Scotland, information on fertility differences within the country is
available only
in
the form of relatively crude fertility indices, and
more refined indices must still be obtained in the form of estimates.
The main purpose of the present note is to analyse the changes in
fertility which have taken place
in
each city and county between 1931
and 1951.
For an inter-area comparison refemng to a given year it is not
necessary to work out gross reproduction rates, since ratios of actual
to expected births suffice to indicate fertility differentials
;
but the
position is more complex when changes over time are analysed simul-
taneously
with
regional variations. Gross reproduction rates appear
to be the most satisfactory set of indices for this purpose. They
represent the average number
of
girls which would be born
to
each
new-born girl, at current fertility levels in each age-group,
if
all such
girls survived to the end of their reproductive period. There are more
elaborate measures of fertility, but even if the data were available the
numbers would be too small for their application to serve any useful
purpose. Gross reproduction rates are usually calculated for a single
year; but
it
was felt that the inaccuracy resulting from the small
numbers of births observed in the majority of counties would be more
serious than that which
might
arise from using basic population data
which are technically not quite appropriate. The calculations have
therefore been made for the averages of the years 1930-32 and 1950-52,
Enid Charles.
‘
Differential Fertility
in
Scotland,
1911-31
’,
Transactions
of
the
Royal
Society
of
Edinburgh,
Vol.
LIX,
1936-39,
pp.
371-83, 673-86.
83
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