The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-18


 rai districts Is without special sig nificance until the differences In the age constitutions of the two regions are taken into account
 The ages of the population were as- certained more accurately at the cen- sus of 1900 than at any previous cen- sus of the United States. This im- provement was largely due to the ad- dition of an inquiry as to date of birth to the former direct question as to year of age
 Accuracy of the Age Returns.
 The analysis of the census returns affords convincing evidence of the tendency to nnderstate ages. This ten- dency manifests itself in the unduly large proportions of the population re- porting their age as 25, 30. 35. 40, etc A skillful analysis of the returns shows that except among persons of advanced years, this concentration on multiples of five represents in the majority of | cases an understatement of age. The | tendency to report ages as less than the truth is strongest in the negro population. stronger in the foreign born | white than in the native white popu- latfon. and Is stronger with females than with males.
 There is evidence of an overstate- ment of the ages of young children,
 which is explained as due to the ten- | dency to denote 8 childs age by the year of life, rather than by the number of completed years. This leads to a large apparent deficiency of children in the first few years of life. The ap- parent deficiency is more marked in the | case of children in the second year of life than of those in their first year. result due to the fact that the ages of children less than a year old are re- ported by months.
 The age returns of the more illiterate ! classes of the population are less &C., 1 curate than those of the more intel ligent classes. Moreover, the distri- button of errors in the age returns is | such as to suggest that the census in formation obtained about the more in- telligent classes in districts in which there are large numbers of illiterates is less accurate as q rule than informa- tion obtained about the same class of persons in districts where the general average of education is higher. The evident explanation is that the census enumerators held more consistently to high standards of accuracy in those regions where a high average of &C., curacy was possible.
 The number of centenarians in the population Is grossly exaggerated in the returns. this exaggeration being especially marked in the case of the more il1iterate classes.
 The Median Age.
 The median age of the aggregate population of continental United States Chat is. the age which exactly divides the population into halves) is PASS years. One-half of the population is above that age, one-half below 1t. One hundred years ago the median age was 15.s7; since 1920 it has in creased. on the average, by two-thirds of a year each decade. The median age of the population living in cities of over 25,000 inhabitants Is about 3 1-2 years greater than that of the popula- tion living in smaller cities and rural districts.
 This difference may be attributed to two main causes--the higher birth rate of the rural districts. and the migration from the country to the cities, which, like migration from abroad. consists largely of adults. Moreover. the cities contain a larger proportion of foreign born persons than do the rural | districts. The median age is high in the North Atlantic and Western States and low in the South Atlantic and South Central States. In the North Central division 1t approximates that of the country as a whole. The aver
  ing from dividing the total years livedu by the living population) is some years higher than the median age. being, for the aggregate population in 1900, 26.2 years.
 Age Constitution of the Population.
 About three -fifths of the total popu- lation of the United States are between IS and 60 years old-comprising what Is sometimes called the productive ic Iovo tion of the population than is found in the same age group in most European countries-a fact which is due to the large number of foreign born adults in our population. But the only European countries which have so small a proportion of their population at productive ages" as Is found in the native white population of the United States are Holland and the Scandinavian countries.
 Nearly one-fourth of the population are less than 10 years old and over hree-sevenths are less than 20. Less than one-seventh have accomplished half the possible hundred years of human life. and only twenty-three out of every thousand have passed the all lotted three score years and ten" The greater average maturity of the urban population. shown by a higher
 
 larger proportion in the period of early middle life. The rural population is relatively more numerous at both ex- tremes of the age table.
 Children reported as less than a year old constitute 2.5 per cent of the az gregate population. while children un- der constitute 12.1 per cent. Both of these proportions are considerably smaller than they were in 1880, and are smaller than the corresponding ratios for most European countries. The proportion of children under 1 in the total population varies from one in thirty in Utah to one in sixty in Cali fornia. The number of children in the population is relatively least in New England and on the Pacific coast; 1t is relatively highest in the South and in some of the new agricultural States of the West and Northwest.
 Of the aggregate population 51 per cent are males and 49 per cent are females. but in the age groups of Is to 19 years, 20 to "A years. and so years and over. there are more women than men, These facts are shown to be in general agreement with the statistics respecting the relative numbers of the sexes born and the death rate of the sexes at various ages. The difference between cities and rural districts, with respect to the proportions of the sexes in the different age groups. are such that they can be only partially eX- plained by the differences between rural and urban death rates: they con tINy fA