| Sumario: | In the rural population both farm and nonfarm, both White and nonwhite, fertility declines as the level of living rises. What appear at first glance to be regional differences in fertility between the northern and western U.S., on the one hand, and the South, on the other, turn out not to be differences in ratios between similar level level-of-living groups in these regions but to arise from the different proportions of the populations of these regions belonging in the different level-of-living groups. Exceptions to the fertility declines as the level of living rises in the West are to be explained chiefly by the strong influence of the Mormon Church on the rural population, particularly on the rural-farm population in Utah and Idaho. However, the sparseness of all population and the isolation of many of the farms in this region should not be overlooked as a cause of high ratios. There is still a pioneering element in farming in the west, except along the coast, and pioneers always have had high fertility. Even what many people have thought of as racial differences in fertility turn out to be associated more closely with level of living than with race. When Whites and nonwhites belong to the same level-of-living groups they have much the same fertility, such difference as there is being largely in favor of the Whites. In making a preliminary survey of the materials available for this study of differential rural fertility it became apparent almost at once that in the South there was a close relation between the proportion of nonwhites in the rural population of a county and the index of the level of living in that county.
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