THE GEOGRAPHY OF HUMAN FERTILITY
IN NORTHERN IRELAND (1961)
ALAN ROBINSON
Magee University College Londonderry
One of the fundamental features of the human geography of Northern
Ireland is the high fertility and birth-rate of the population. The subject
lias been considered by A. T. Park in his capacity as Registrar General1
and to a lesser extent by E. Jones in his book on the social geography of
Belfast.2 It is intended in this paper to examine fertility throughout the
Province from a geographical point of view by mapping the feature. In
particular an attempt is made to demonstrate the relationships between
high fertility and marginal or remote situations.
Before fertility is examined in Northern Ireland it is necessary to compare the birth-rate of the Province with that of other countries in Europe.
The pattern of birth-rates would appear to be significant, though it must
be remembered that crude birth-rates only provide a limited guide to
actual fertility in that they take no account of the age-structure of the
population. The birth-rate in Northern Ireland was 22.4 per thousand
persons in 1961.3 This figure may be compared with similar fertility
figures for areas in Europe south of the Alps which like Northern Ireland
are noted for their under-valorization and under-utilisation of resources,
for example Portugal 23.8, Spain 21.3, Sardinia 22.9, Sicily 22.2, South
Italy 23.0, Malta 23.3. The highest birth-rate in Europe is to be found in
Iceland with 28.0. These figures contrast with those of the countries in
western Europe which have lower birth-rates and which are noted for
their higher standard of living, for example, Western Germany 18.3,
France 18.3, Belgium 17.0, and Luxembourg 16.1. The returns for Europe
302
as a whole would seem to indicate that the birth rate is especially related
to the economic growth and development of a country. Thus the Common
Market countries of western Europe have prospered more quickly since
1945 than have those less favoured countries of the Mediterranean and
Atlantic fringes that are on the margins of the continent. Accordingly
the index of increase of per capita product (based on national income
1953-61) was 12.2 in Iceland and 13.3 in the Republic of Ireland, while it
was 32.5 in both France and Belgium.4 Broadly the suggestion is that
fertility is inversely proportional to the rate of economic growth. This is
further illustrated by the fact that highly developed Sweden has a lower
birth-rate (13.9) than less developed Norway (17.5) or Finland (18.4) and
northern industrial Italy has a lower birth-rate (16.2) than the agricultural
south (23.0). Similarly England and Wales have a lower birth-rate (17.6)
than that of Scotland (19.5), whose figure in turn is lower than that for
either the Republic of Ireland or for Northern Ireland.
Within Northern Ireland, the east, dominated by the Belfast region,
has tended to develop more rapidly than the west and the discrepancy
has increased since 1945. In the period 1945-66, of 217 new firms established in Northern Ireland, 198 (91 %) have been located to the east of a line
from Castlerock (Co. Londonderry) to Killylea (Co. Armagh). Nearly
seven times as many jobs have been provided to the east of that line than
to the west of it. If, therefore, the industrial development in the east has
been greater than that in the west we might expect the fertility to be
higher to the west of the Province.
A more accurate indicator of fertility than the birth-rate is the fertility
ratio, which takes into account the number of women of childbearing age.
It may be calculated as follows :—B
the number of children under 5 years
X
1000
the number of women aged between 15 and 49 years
Thus the average fertility rate for Northern Ireland in 1961 was 443.6
A detailed analysis of the fertility within the Province, however, reveals
noticeably lower rates in the east than in the west (Fig. 1). Thus 425, the
figure for County Down, and 446 for County Antrim contrast with the
rates of the western counties of Fermanagh (499), Tyrone (525) and
Londonderry (525). Fertility in agricultural areas tends to be high. For
example Lisburn Rural District has a fertility of 511, while the Urban
District has a fertility of 334. The agricultural west may, therefore, be
expected to have a high fertility. Nevertheless high fertility in the
303
PBPXILLT*.
Over 528
456-528
443-485
0 M I L E S 3,0.
Kumto Children 0-4-tp.
Kumbcr Women Í5-49¿)W.
p9
•
M>iu357
O Countu Boroughs, Market ßorougos
and Urban Districts.
Afcovc 12-8 %
-9-9 —12-8%
6'9 <— 9:8 %
5-9 — 6«8 %
ßaoiu 3-8%
Over 80%
50 - 6k
3 5 - 49'
20-34
Under20.
•
O
Countu
Market ßorouqf«
3 Êoroughs,,
' 3âtti Urban Districts.
A-
Fig. l.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.
western counties is not entirely a reflection of the agricultural nature of
the economy for the industrial city of Derry has a much higher fertility
rate (539) than has Belfast (326).
In fact the more significant economic factors affecting fertility would
seem to be the degree of prosperity and the income per head. A recent
map7 of net annual incomes in the United Kingdom showed a marked
contrast between the east of the Province, where the average income per
head was between £572 and £611 per annum, and the west with ' under
£572 '. The income per head for the Belfast region, in its turn, was shown
to be far lower than that in England, where ' more than £732 ' was recorded for the Home Counties and the Midlands. The National Plan 8 revealed
the average income per person in Northern Ireland (1961-3) as only 61 %
of the United Kingdom average. Thus whereas the average index of
income per head for the metropolis of London was 149 in 1959-60 (U.K.
average=ioo), that for the Province of Northern Ireland was 74. Furthermore, the index for County Antrim in the east (88) was contrasted with,
that of County Fermanagh in the west (69); the latter possesses the lowest
average index of income per head in the United Kingdom.9
One of the best indicators of the economic conditions in an area is the
percentage of workers who are registered as unemployed.10 The shortage
of labour in Western Germany and in parts of England contrasts with the
' surplus ' of manpower in Northern Ireland where the shortage of jobs
does not, it seems, restrict the sizes of families. Unemployment figures are
compiled for employment-exchange areas, which, unfortunately, do not
coincide with the other administrative areas for which population data,
is available. Nevertheless the relationship between fertility and the level
of unemployment is clear (Fig. 2). For example, the Newry employmentexchange area has both high unemployment (2,301 persons registered in
March 1966, or 18.5% male unemployment) and high fertility (529) . u
Similarly, the Derry area has 2,825 persons unemployed (or 13.7% male
unemployment) and a fertility of 544.12 On the other hand, the Ballyclare
employment-exchange area immediately to the north of that of Belfast
has very low rates of unemployment (only 71 registered in March 1966
or 1.8% male unemployment) and a correspondingly low fertility rateof 352 in the Urban District. Moreover in the Antrim employmentexchange area where 134 unemployed persons were registered (1.7%
male unempolyment) the fertility was only 380.
Park published the percentage of persons who received National Assistance in Belfast and Derry in 1954 and was able to show a relationship
between high fertility (1951) and low economic status within the two cities.
Table 1 relates these National Assistance figures to fertility in Belfast in
1961.
305
TABLE 1.«
WARDS IN BELFAST WITH MORE THAN 8% OF THE TOTAL
EMPLOYED POPULATION ON NATIONAL ASSISTANCE IN 1954
AND THEIR FERTILITY RATIOS FOR 1961.
% in receipt of National
Assistance 1954
Fertility Ratio
1961
Court
9.9
489
Falls
8.4
547
Smithfield
9.1
571
Ward
WARDS IN BELFAST WITH LESS THAN 5% OF THE TOTAL
EMPLOYED POPULATION ON NATIONAL ASSISTANCE IN 1954 AND
THEIR FERTILITY RATIOS FOR 1961.
% in receipt of National
Assistance 1954
Fertility Ratio
1961
Pottinger
4.9
361
Victoria
4.2
338
Windsor
4.3
249
Ward
A map of social rank within Belfast shows the ' residential ' Windsor
ward as being entirely within the first rank, and the ' industrial ' Court
ward as being largely fourth rank.14 The fertility in the ' residential '
areas of Belfast in 1951 was calculated as 233 and the ' industrial ' areas
as 439.15 Similarly in Deny the ward with the highest percentage unemployed—the South ward—has the highest fertility within the city, whereas
the North ward with the least unemployment has the lowest fertility.
The Fertility Report, 1961, for Northern Ireland does not, unfortunately,
yield any information for administrative areas within the Province, but
in relating the mean family size16 to socio-economic status it does show
that agricultural workers and unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers
Tiave the largest families (4.26, 4.30 and 3.86 mean family size respectively).
At the other extreme, professional workers in Northern Ireland have a
mean family size of 2.28. In Deny, 2,587 heads of households were either
306
•unskilled or semi-skilled manual workers in 1961, but only 98 were
professional workers.17
The rateable value of houses by wards simply mirrors the social rank
of the majority of the inhabitants and thereby is closely related to the
percentage of persons unemployed. For instance, the Windsor ward in
Belfast which has the lowest fertility in the city possesses the highest
average house valuation (¿31.9m 1957), and the Smithfield ward which has
the highest fertility possesses the lowest house valuation (¿8.3). Furthermore, in Derry the South ward, with a large proportion of residents
unemployed, has the lowest average house valuation in the city (£16.8),
and also the highest fertility. Conversely, the North ward, with the lowest
proportion enemployed and a higher social rank, has the highest average
house valuation (£22.4) and the lowest fertility.
While fertility would seem to be related to unemployment, social rank,
and house valuation, which in themselves reflect the rate of economic
growth and the standard of living, nevertheless the most important social
factor affecting fertility undoubtedly is religious affiliation. Human
fertility is higher in areas where large proportions of the population are
Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic church has not approved of modern
methods of birth control. Accordingly, figure 3, which shows the distribution of Roman Catholics within Northern Ireland, should be compared
with figure 1, which shows the distribution of fertility. A correlation
clearly exists.
There are fewer Roman Catholics in the east than in the remoter
west of the Province. The Catholic proportion of 24.4% of the total
population in County Antrim and 28.5% in County Down contrasts with
the proportions in Counties Fermanagh (52.8%) and Tyrone (54.8%),
while Belfast County Borough with a proportion of 27.4% is lower than
Derry County Borough where 67.1% of the population were Catholic in
1961.18 Proportionately few Catholics are resident in those Rural Districts
with a fertility of less than 443. For example, Ballymena Rural District
(County Antrim) has only 17% of its inhabitants belonging to the Roman
Catholic church and has a fertility of 381, while Hillsborough Rural
District (County Down), with less than 9% of its inhabitants Catholic, also
has a fertility of less than 400. Conversely, where Catholics form the
majority of the population, the fertility is highei than 443. Thus the
Isfewry and Ballycastle areas, with 72% and 57%, have a majority of
Catholic inhabitants, and have fertilities of 529 and 492 respectively. In
Belfast itself the Smithfield and Falls wards are 90% Catholic, and as the
following table indicates have far greater fertilities than those wards with
Protestant majorities. Jones calculated the fertility in the Catholic areas
of Belfast as 491 in 1951, and as 267 in Protestant areas.19
307
TABLE 2.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION AND FERTILITY AND
SOCIAL RANK AND FERTILITY
% Roman Catholic
1961
Fertility Ratio
1961
% in receipt of
Nat. Ass. 1954
Smithfield
90
571
9.1
Falls
91
547
8.4
Victoria
5
338
4.2
Shankill
9
379
5.2
South
90
655
13.7
Waterside
38
419
8.5
Wards in Belfast
Wards in Derry
Some of the effect on fertility attributed to religion i? due to other
factors stemming from the economic and social disadvantages cf remote
and underprivileged areas. It should be remembered that the peripheral
Newry and Ballycastle areas are the least developed within the eastern
half of the Province, and that the Smithfield and Falls wards are among
the poorest of Belfast. Newry has been adversely affected by the Border
with the Republic of Ireland, and Ballycastle in the north-east suffers
from remoteness.
There are historical reasons to help explain this relationship between
Catholic areas and underdevelopment. In Northern Ireland, the Plantations of the seventeenth century had the general effect of removing the
native Irish to the poorer and remoter lands; later, many of them migrated into the towns, where they settled in congested suburbs. Thus the
Roman Catholic Irish are numerically dominant in the remoter stretches
of country in the east, in the poorer areas of the cities (for example in the
Smithfield ward in Belfast and the South ward in Derry), and throughout
the west of the Province (Fig. 3). Moreover the Catholic still tends to
belong to the lower socio-economic ranks which reinforces the tendency
to high fertility in such underdeveloped areas. In the first instance the
308
fertility and birth-rate is high because of the slow rate of economic growth
and in the second because a large proportion of the inhabitants are Roman
Catholic. Thus Table 2 shows that the Waterside ward in Deny has a
similar proportion of persons unemployed as the Falls ward in Belfast,
but its fertility is lower because only 38% of its residents are Catholic.
But on the other hand the South ward in Deny has the same proportion
of Catholic citizens as the Falls ward in Belfast and the fertility is higher
because Deny lies to the west on the margins of the country, has a high
unemployment rate and a low standard of living. Indeed, the South ward
in Deny, with both a Catholic majority and a great number of persons
unemployed and of a low social rank, has the highest fertility in Northern
Ireland. The presence of Roman Catholic majorities, therefore, heightens
the fertility of areas whose rate of economic growth is disappointing, or
whose inhabitants are of a low socio-economic status.
A Roman Catholic family tends to be larger than a non-Catholic family
of the same socio-economic status, but a high-status Catholic family
tends to be smaller in size than a low-status non-Catholic family. That is,
a Catholic professional family is on the average smaller than that of a
non-Catholic family whose head is an unskilled manual worker. A
Catholic professional employee's mean family size is 3.46 children and a
non-Catholic professional employee's mean family size is 1.90 children,
but a non-Catholic unskilled manual worker's family averages 3.49
children. Furthermore, there are relatively few Catholic professional
workers: the figures for families whose heads were aged 45 years and over
in 1961 indicated that only 216 Catholic families in Northern Ireland are
professional, as compared with 2,128 non-Catholic professional families.80
Since lower-status Catholic families tend to be larger than those of Catholic
professional employees it is probable that some of the high fertility
among Roman Catholics is due to their lower social and economic status
and not solely to their religious beliefs.
Border or marginal areas would appear to have higher fertilities than
central areas on a continental, national or provincial scale. A political
boundary generates little or no economic activity of its own, with the
result that the peripheral territories of Northern Ireland are dependent
upon the fortunes of the British economy and the policies of Westminster
and Stormont. Of necessity, the west of the Province looks eastward,
and must turn its back on the Border. The head of Lough Foyle cannot
successfully compete with that of the Belfast Lough for capital, and the
Foyle valley receives little English investment as compared with the
Lagan valley. As in other peripheral areas, economic growth in the west
has been hampered by remoteness from the major centres of production
and population, and the problem of unemployment has not been eased
309
by the high fertility that exists. While some firms may be attracted to
Northern Ireland by the availability of labour, the large number of schoolleavers (1,300 left school in Deny alone in the summer of 1966) assures
the continuation of migration. The east of the Province has a distinct
advantage over the west. The towns of Keady and Newry to the east,
despite having more than 80 % of their inhabitants belonging to the Roman
Catholic church, have fertilities of 499 and 480 respectively, which are
lower than the fertilities of Strabane and Deny to the west, where less
than 80% of the population aie Catholic. The birth-rate in Deny was
accordingly 31.8 persons per thousand in 1964 and was higher than the
birth-iate in isolated Iceland or prolific Puerto Rico.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1
A. T. Park, ' An Analysis of Human Fertility in Northern Ireland ', Journal of
the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland XXI (1), 1-13 (1962-3).
2
E. Jones, A Social Geography of Belfast, 154-58 (1960).
3
United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 42-3 (1962).
4
Ibid, 489.
5
F. J. Monkhouse and H. R. Wilkinson, Maps and Diagrams, 227 (1952).
6
Census of Population, 1961, Northern Ireland.
7
E. M. Rawstron and B. E. Coates, ' Opportunity and Affluence ', Geography,
51 (1), 1-15 (1966).
8
The National Plan (Cmnd. 2764), p. 90. (1965).
9
A. E. Holmans, " Inter-Regional Differences in Levels of Income : Are there
'Two Nations ' or One ? " Papers on Regional Development, T. Wilson (Ed.), 1-19
(1965).
10
A. T. Park, op.cit. (note 1); 3.
11
The fertility rate for the Newry area was calculated for the Urban District and
the two Rural Districts which correspond with the employment-exchange area.
12
The fertility rate for the Derry area was calculated from the census figures for
the Rural District and the County Borough.
13
Table 1 has been adapted from the data supplied by Park, op.cit. (note 1), 9,
and Jones, op.cit. (note 2), 154-5. The writer has substituted 1961 fertility figures
for those of 1951 in Professor Jones's work.
14
E. Jones, op.cit. (note 2), 167.
15
Ibid, 154.
16
Census of Population, Fertility Report, Northern Ireland (1961). The mean family
size refers to the total number of children born.
17
Census of Population, County and County Borough of Londonderry (1961).
18
These percentages are based on the 1961 Census. The average for Northern
Ireland is 34.9%.
19
E. Jones, op.cit. (note 2), 155.
20
Fertility Report, op.cit. (note 15).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author wishes to acknowledge the encouragement received during the preparation of this paper from Dr. D. McCourt and to thank Magee University College for
a grant towards the cost of of the illustrations.
310