ABSTRACT
The process of demographic change and response is not only continuous but also reflexive and behavioral—reflexive in the sense that a change in one component is eventually altered by the change it has induced in other components; behavioral in the sense that the process involves human decisions in the pursuit of goals with varying means and conditions. A study of maternity cases in Israel in 1958 showed that, for women born in Europe, American, and Australia-New Zealand, 32 percent of those having a third birth admitted having resorted to induced abortion. If Western prudery and Oriental realism have led to an exaggeration of the role of abortions in Japan, this tendency has been helped by a statistical illusion. If the late age at marriage in Ireland is to be explained, it must therefore be explain in terms applicable to northwest Europe as a whole.
