Andrew Collver has produced a most useful and challenging book. It is useful as a source of data and as a study of a complex social problem. It is challenging in its methodology and in some of its conclusions.
To the general Latin Americanist it provides an excellent source of demographic data (not just data on birth rates, as the title implies). These data have been adjusted for each of the twenty Latin American countries in such a manner that they appear to be the most accurate available for the late nineteenth and the twentieth century concerning the demography of Latin America. Certainly they should be cited and employed in preference to the data from the Demographic Yearbook or the official census figures from each country. There is also a country-by-country evaluation of the official statistics available.
Collver has also taken a major step toward rendering data that will admit of both historical and geographical comparisons. He has gathered some data that will permit more specific analysis of fluctuations that have occurred in any one country since the mid-nineteenth century, opening the way to the study of how such fluctuations are related to other phenomena. The data will also permit more specific comparisons of the population histories of two or more countries.
One of the most challenging aspects of the book is its rigidly objective methodology. Collver has set forth the formulae employed to compare vital statistics with census data and developed a rationale to justify the assumptions of each model. Demographers are accustomed to such a methodology, but most Latin Americanists are not yet “at ease” with symbolic logic. To follow the clear and potent application of elementary algebra in the present work should be a good exercise for the non-quantifier.
Some of the conclusions reached are also challenging. “If a radical change in marriage patterns has not occurred in Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay, the decline of crude birth rates in these countries can only be accounted for by reduced marital fertility (or, more precisely, by reduced fertility of couples who are married or in some form of consensual union)” (p. 42). “On the average, the actual fertility of countries in Latin America is held to about half of the biological maximum by the mating institutions” (p. 47). “If postponement of marriages accounts for short-run fluctuation of the birth rate, we should expect to find a drop in the marriage rate of most Latin American countries in 1915-19 and 1930-34.” (p. 52). “Birth control within marriage has been chiefly responsible for the reduction of fertility in Argentina and Cuba” (p. 54).
Collver’s data, methodology, and conclusions are not perfect. His statement that in Guatemala “births are completely registered” (p. 124) indicates the kind of foolish error that reliance on statistical methods can permit. Nevertheless, the usefulness of Latin American demographic data has been greatly advanced by his work.
