To present this properly, and demonstrate the part taken by each group in the movements of population, it is essential to consider class reproduction; not alone fecundity and size of family, but marriage rate as well must be taken into account. In both the status of the college graduate as a class is most creditable, and at variance with all that has been assumed, though conditions differ greatly in individual institutions.
The marriage rate is surprisingly high for the highly educated, or, to be precise, for 4,408 college graduates, even if the 88.7 per cent, of Brown '72 and the 87 per cent, of the Bowdoin classes of 1875 and '77 is above the average, which is 79.4 per cent, for 16 Yale, Brown, Bowdoin and Princeton classes, and 75.4 per cent, if we include the 9 Harvard classes '72-'80 with their low marriage rate of 71.4 per cent.
My investigations show that the college graduate, the academic graduate (conditions differ for scientific graduates), marries 7-7 years after leaving college, at nearly 30 years, so that we can compare him with the age group 30-39 of the native American male, with a marriage rate of 68.8 per cent., closely approximating the Harvard average.
Table I.
Marriage Rate. 30 Classes, 4,408 Graduates.[1]
Group 40—49 years of age, approximately.
- ↑ This table is arranged according to rate of marriage.
