Some three years ago a note in this Journal (J.S.S.10, 24) called attention to the rapid decline that was taking place in the numbers of unmarried women in this country, due to the fact that the number of marriages was exceeding the number of young women reaching the marriageable ages. During the past three years statistics of a further three or four years' marriages have been issued and a sample analysis of the total population enumerated at the 1951 Census has been published. It may be of interest, therefore, to examine these data to see whether the trends exhibited in the years up to 1947–48 have continued and whether the 1951 Census results confirm the estimates given by the Registrar General for the inter-war years.

The first assertion made in the note referred to is that ‘a considerable fall in the number of marriages, to be followed by a consequential fall in the number of births, is almost inevitable during the next few years’. As the number of marriages in England and Wales in the years 1950–52 averaged only 356,000, whereas during the period 1939–47 the average level was 385,000 a year, the first part of the assertion is being substantiated.