• DOI:10.1086/201274
• Corpus ID: 143449170

Addendum: Child Transport, Family Size, and Increase in Human Population During the Neolithic

@article{Sussman1972AddendumCT,
  title={Addendum: Child Transport, Family Size, and Increase in Human Population During the Neolithic},
  author={Robert Wald Sussman and Roberta L. Hall},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={1972},
  volume={13},
  pages={258 - 267}
}

• R. Sussman, R. Hall
• Published 1 April 1972
• History, Economics
• Current Anthropology

While in the 20-year period between World Wars I and II the birth rate in Poland first decreased and then increased, in the (more than 20-year) period between World War II and the present the birth rate first increased and then decreased. The manifest improvement in the living conditions of the population in recent years has caused a very insignificant rise in the birth rate. In the first postwar years, the countryside, less destroyed than the cities, showed a higher birth rate, while from 1950 until the legalization of abortion the birth rate was higher in the urban population; since the enacting of the abortion law, the rural birth rate has been higher, and the discrepancy between city and country is growing. In the light of the above, it may be assumed that the birth rate is a very unreliable index of economic (national income) and political (wars) conditions; to a considerable extent, it depends on the prevailing customs (including religious beliefs) with regard to contraceptives and on the laws with regard to abortion. In some stretches of the nearly 70-year period analysed, increase in national income was accompanied by an increase in the birth rate, while in other periods there was no such relationship. The old theories of Malthus and the more recent neo-Malthusian ideas thus find no confirmation in the Polish experience.