The Changing Structure of the Family in Australia

THE existence of declining fertility in all highly industrialised countries is now well known. Since fertility in Western and Northern Europe and the United States has reached a level which, if maintained, must eventually lead to a declining population, it is now advisable to analyse in greater detail the changes which have taken place in the reproductive behaviour of people in these countries. Before an effective programme can be devised to arrest or reverse falling fertility, we need to know how far the fall has been accompanied by a reduction in the number of large families and to what extent it entails an increase in the number of women having no children. The present paper is mainly an attempt to throw some light on these two questions, and, in so doing, to ascertain the proportions of families of various sizes appropriate to different fertility levels. Such considerations are fundamental to a housing programme designed to arrest population decline. Owing to the defective system of birth registration it is impossible to get direct information concerning Great Britain. The country selected for study is the Commonwealth of Australia, over the period 1909 to 1933. For any study of size of family from year to year the essential data are records of births by age of mother and order of birth of child. For the Commonwealth of Australia the data are first given for I909, so that a period of twenty-five years has been covered. Details of the data and methods employed will be found in later sections.