(4) Education has been alleged as a cause of decreasing birth rate in
the native white American stock. This, however, is true only in a very
qualified sense. While it is a fact, as collected statistics have shown,
that if Harvard and other universities depended on children of their
alumni for students their attendance would actually decrease in numbers,
it is not true that college graduates have had a lower birth rate than
the economic and social classes to which they belong. So far as
statistics have been collected, indeed, they seem to indicate that the
wealthy uneducated are producing fewer children than the educated
classes who associate with them. The influence decreasing the birth rate
among the educated is, therefore, not education itself, but the high
standards of living and the luxury of the classes with whom they
associate.
On the other hand, the higher education of women seems to be, down to
the present time, operating as a distinct influence to lessen the birth
rate among the educated classes for the reason that apparently a
majority of educated women do not marry.
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