Social Mobility and Fertility within an Elite Group

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Abstract
Parents with more education, higher incomes and various other indices of high socio-economic status tend to have smaller families than parents in less fortunate circumstances. However this is not true in the "elite" group considered in the present study, where differences in circumstances do not cause differences in the size of family. A study of 770 Philadelphians who were listed in Who''s Who in 1940 was made to compare the fertility of 226 of these who were listed in the Philadelphia Social Register with the 544 who were not listed. The first group reported 262 children per 100 male parents as compared with 280 per 100 male parents in the non-social register group. 57% of the non-social register group had 2 or less children while only 44% of the "elite" group fell into this category. Comparison of the group that went to private as opposed to public schools in both the social and non-social register groups, showed the mate parents who attended private schools to have more children than those male parents who went to public school. Episcopalians reported higher birth rates than other Protestants in the social register group but not in the non-social-register group. Other factors favourably affecting family size in Philadelphia were Philadelphia as the birthplace of the male parent and listing of the parents in the social register in 1900. The conclusions are made that the less mobile a family group becomes the more familistic it becomes and hence size of family is apt to be greater than in the "more newly arrived" groups.
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