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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Population and Migration - 7. Population - 2. Births and Deaths
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i 62 An American Dilemma
While there are proportionately more Negro than white infants born,
significantly fewer of the Negro infants live. During 1940, 73 out of every
1,000 live Negro infants were recorded to have died before reaching their
first birthday, as compared to 43 white babies out of every i,000 born.^* If
the official statistics were more accurate, they would undoubtedly reveal a
much greater differential in infant mortality rates. While a good many
more Negro infants die than white infants, in proportion to their total
numbers, the difference in death rates for children and mature adults is
apparently even greater.*® Only at ages above 50 does the Negro death rate
apparently begin to fall to the level of the white death rate. If a Negro child
is born alive,*® it has (in 1930), on the average, a life expectancy of roughly
48.5 years, while the average white newborn child can expect to reach the
age of 60.9 years.** For a stationary population with a stable age distribu-
tion, these expectancy figures would correspond to a death rate for Negroes
of 20.6 per thousand population and for whites of 16.4. The actually
registered death rates were, in 1930, 16.5 per thousand for Negroes and 10.8
for whites.*® The lower actual rates are due not only to under-registration,
but also to the abnormal age structure: both Negroes and whites have
a disproportionate number of young adults.
As we said, the birth rate has been falling for both Negroes and whites.
The fall in fertility is the major factor behind the secular decline in net
reproduction for both population groups; the decrease in mortality has not
been able to effect more than a rather slight checking of this decline. It is
probable that since 1930 the birth rate for whites has fallen more rapidly
than the birth rate. for Negroes.*®
The existing data regarding trends in the death rate are so faulty and
self-contradictory that it is hardly worth while to quote them. The avail-
able data do not permit us to compare trends in the Negro and white death
rates.*® If the death rates have been falling for both groups, it would
seem that they were falling more rapidly for whites than for Negroes until
1930. In 1930 the mortality rate for the Negro population was higher
than the rate for the white population thirty years previously, in 1900.*®
It is likely that since 1930 the death rate has fallen more rapidly for
Negroes than for whites.*®
The decline in the birth rate for both whites and Negroes has been chang-
ing the aga structure of the populations and this, in turn, is having certain
effects on both birth and death rates. Even if the age specific birth rates
(that is, the birth rate for each age group ofwomen) should remain constant,
the crude birth rate (that is, the birth rate for the entire population) will
ultimately drop as the population grows older. The crude birth rate is now
Dudley Kirk, <*The Fertility of the Negroes,” unpublished manuscript prepared for this
study [1940], p. 14.) Not only are there errors due to under-registration in these calcula-
tions, but there are also errors due to misreporting of age by women.
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