Page Six

THE JEWISH NEWS

Jewish Population
Studies

By SAMUEL M. LEVIN

Friday, February 26, 1943

production rate of 154. But there are no rural
reserves, nor other sources, at the present time to
offset the downward tendency of the Jewish urban
population. These negative demographic manifes-
tations, moreover, once encountered are exceedingly
difficult to control. They are even more difficult in
the Jewish sphere.

Professor of Economics, Wayne University

HE appearance of "Jewish Popula-
tion Studies," a 1943 publication of
the Conference on Jewish Relations,
provides a needed opportunity to
peer into some aspects of Jewish
life with respect to which there were
suppositions and vague ideas, but no firm ground-
work of knowledge, "Jewish Population Studies"
contains summary reports of censuses in the Jewish
population field conducted in the decade of the
thirties in 10 American cities, strung across the
continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In this
list the smallest Jewish population mentioned is
that of Norwich, Connecticut, which in 1938 had
1647 Jews, the largest—that of Chicago with an
estimated Jewish population in 1930 of 265,000.
The total for the 10 communities, which includes
Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Minneapolis and San
Francisco, but not such cities as New York, Boston
or Philadelphia, nor any city south of the Mason
and Dixon's line, was 500,914 only 10 or 10 1/2
percent of the Jewish population of the United
States in the mid-thirties, a small segment of the
complete Jewish population picture.

ing cities like Detroit and Chicago, the rate of
Jewish increase, in the first three decades of the
Twentieth Century, was approximately double that
of the general population increase experienced in
these localities. It is in the urban environments
that one encounters the devious types of concen-
trations, so that in a city like Trenton, the number
of Jewish physicians and surgeons constituted two-
thirds of the total number of 122 medical prac-
titioners, though the Jewish population of Trenton

in 1937 was only 6% of the total. But perhaps the
fact of primary importance is that complex of cir-
cumstances characterizing Jewish urban life in
this country, such as vanishing accessions from

foreign sources, the extraordinarily low fertility of
native Jewish stock, the lack of a compensatory

•'*

tk:S •

The present compilation of data is not the result

of a planned single minded technique of research.
On the contrary four different statistical methods
were used, one of them "the technique of building
up the desired but unknown Jewish population
from the known number of deaths in the various
age and sex groups" suggesting one of the earliest
methods in the demographic field—that of John
Graunt, propounded in his "Observations upon the
London Bills of Mortality" which appeared in

Foundation for Social Planning

Though "an understanding of the sociological
si9.-nificance" of the Jewish population picture has
not, as the editor points out, been a major consid-
eration in this research, I am of the opinion that
the publication of this book warrants an earnest
effort at interpretation and understanding. The

size of population, occupational structure, and
ward distribution were of interest to the Jewish

Fe leration of Trenton in planning for the raising
and allocation of community funds; the Jewish
population of Detroit was studied "in order to
throw light on the structure of that community
and the relationship between its members and the
rest of the city." The sundry facts assembled on
narivitv, categories of gainfully occupied workers,
size of the family, age groups, concentration in
nci-=•hborhood zones, household composition, citi-
zenship status, and the like surely provide a needed
factual foundation for social planning. Even if
data fall short of hypothetical norms of statistical
perie‘ction, they do throw a needed light on the
str ,:cture of our communities and pave the way for
a better knowledge of relationships between Jews

and other community elements.

Concentration in Neighborhoods

One cannot thread his way through the mass of

statistical tabulations which the book contains

without reaching the conclusion that there is a
remarkable resemblance between the general con-
tours of the different examples of Jewish urbanism,
no matter whether the community be small or
large; whether it be located in the east, midwest,
or the Pacific seaboard. Thus the basic facts about
the City of Detroit in 1935 apply to Norwich,
Passaic, Chicago or San Francisco; e.g., concentra-
tion in neighborhood areas, in trade and the white-
collar occupations, the usual crowding of men in
medicine, dentistry and law and the sizeable num-
ber of small proprietors and self-employed. In the
Jewish population of Detroit 24 percent in 1935

was under 15 years of age as compared with 27
percent of the total population. The same type of
phenomenon is discernible in the other cities.

It is the nature and implications of the deeply
in."4-rained characteristics of Jewish urbanism that
stand out grimly and challengingly in the mass of

dry data gathered in this volume. In rapidly grow-

From the standpoint of national population poli-
cies that had begun to crystallize in the period
before the second World War in such countries
as England, France and Sweden, it is the tapering
off of the rate of increase that has jarred compla-
cency. Insofar as Jewish population in the United
States is concerned, not only is the period of rapid
increase of numbers coming to an end but an en-
suing period characterized by a dead loss is in the
offing. In the future, even those cities which are
able to hold their own or show an increase will do
so, in the absence of an unusual augmentation of
birth rates or new immigration, at the expense of
Jewish groups in other localities. Here is a type of
problem which is certainly deserving of the most
thoughtful consideration of a people that sets as
great store by survival as Jews generally do.

Much that is interesting and important may be
learned from these studies concerning the Jewish
occupational pattern. I strongly recommend them
to all who are interested in Jewish vocational
guidance, a subject of commanding importance
not only from the standpoint of current readjust-
ments necessitated by the war emergency, but also
from that of the desirability of a more even or
wholesome distribution of Jewish workers among
available employments.

Regarding the Jewish predilection for trade Mr.
Henry J. Meyer's idea that "When the activities
of Jewish workers are viewed as a part of the total
economic life of Detroit, the concentration of Jews
in trade need not necessarily be interpreted as an
unbalanced structure" is far from convincing. More
relevant would have been a recognition of the
manner in which certain economic stereotypes have
come into being as adjustment techniques of min-
ority Jewish groups, with their unique culture
patterns, to the culturally distinctive, unsympa-
thetic or discriminatory Gentile environments.

London in 1662.

It appears that the guiding purpose of this
book was primarily the knowledge of techniques
of securing Jewish population data. At best what
one gets is merely an approach to statistical per-
fectibility. It is not surprising that data brought
to light in several cities, viz., Trenton, Passaic,
Pittsburgh and Minneapolis cast a shadow on the
accuracy of the Yom Kippur method. But the
editor comes forth with some strictures of the
other methods, evincing, in the end, a preference
for "the master list supplemented by careful can-
vas of a random basis of outlying areas."

Concentration in Trades

An Unsatisfactory Blueprint

Certainly concentration in trade and in the pro-
fessions has not been the object of legal interdiction
in this country. It is perhaps true that it may even

PROFESSOR SAMUEL M. LEVIN

influx from an agricultural population with higher
birth rates, crowding in trades and white-collar
occupations, a thinning out of numbers at the
bottom with an aging composition at the top, and
the proclivity of Jews to the conditioning influ-
ences of those modes of life that focus on improv-
• ing standards of living. It is these things, hallmarks
of contemporary Jewish urbanism, which conspire
to create the problem of the exceptionally low
birth rates and reproduction rates of the Jewish
communities of this country.

Augury of Slower Growth

Though the various studies, with the exception
of Mr. A. A. Jaffe's of Chicago, shy the subject of
birth rates, death rates and net reproduction rates,
they all in one way or another call attention to
the portent of declining numbers. Thus the Buffalo
data, Mr. Engelman writes, "would seem to indicate
that the Jewish population will decrease more
rapidly than the total population." "The fact that
70 percent of the families in the Jewish population
had only one child under ten in 1938," declares
Mr. Maurice Taylor in the Pittsburgh report, "in
contrast to about 48 percent of the city's total pop-
ulation in 1930, means that Pittsburgh Jewry's rate
of increase was probably not keeping pace even
with the low rate of the total population." In
the Detroit study we read "Insofar as age distribu-
tion indicates future natural increase, the Jewish
population should grow more slowly than the
population of Detroit as a whole." And Mr. Jaffe
points out that the exceedingly low net reproduc-
tion rates of the Jewish areas in Chicago mean
"that the Jewish population not only was not
maintaining itself at a stationary figure, but was
actually decreasing in size from one generation to
the next."

It is to be remembered in this connection that
the idea of net reproduction rate is that of a sta-
tistical device which overcomes temporarily favor-
able age factors and reflects fertility alone. A net
reproduction rate of less than 100 means that in a
period of one generation, the population would
decrease by a percentage equal to the difference
between such rate and the norm of 100; e.g., a
population with a net reproduction rate of 75
would decrease at the rate of 25 percent in a gen-
eration. The 1930 urban net reproduction rate for
the United States as a whole was 84, a rate appre-
ciably below the requirements for a stationary
population. In the same year the total rural farm
population of the United States, showed a net re-
.

be looked upon as a form of specialization. But
we know that wherever anti-Semites are on the
alert, they invariably throw the spotlight on this
aspect of Jewish economic function. We know that
institutional practices, as for example, in the medi-
cal schools, smacking of the numerus clausus are
not uncommon. There is the further fact that any
future slackening of the rate of economic growth,
the possible advent of a prolonged period of gen-
eral economic dislocation and the backwash of the
world cataclysm, may make this traditional blue-
print of Jewish economic life a highly unsatisfac-
tory one.

Though from the angle of modern demography,-
these studies are fragmentary, not even touching
some of the major issues in the population field,
they contain an assortment of interesting facts
about various odds and ends. Thus Passaic, San
Francisco and Pittsburgh report on Hebrew and
Sunday school attendance; average rentals appear
in the Chicago report; mixed marriages in the
Trenton, New London and San Francisco presenta-

tions, unemployment of Jewish workers in Mr.
Meyer's study on the City of Detroit. Other data
reflect on seemingly differential advantages enjoyed
by Jews as against other groups in terms of educa-
tion, incomes, low death rates, and the like.

The Conference on Jewish Relations in promot-
ing these studies has initiated an important type

of research in the Jewish field. It is to be hoped
that, for the sake of a better understanding of
Jewish problems, not only will more such studies
be inaugurated in the future, but that they will
be founded on a broader base. An increase of this
knowledge will not only help our social planners
but will open the eyes of thoughtful men and
women to some complex problems that the Jews
of this country will have to grapple with in the
days ahead.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Professor Levin's article is
based on material in the volume "Jewish Popula-
tion Studies" edited by Sophia M. Robison with the
assistance of Joshua Starr and published by the
Conference on Jewish Relations. Included in theSe
studies is Henry J. Meyer's summary of his study
"The Economic Structure of the Jewish Commun-
ity in. Detroit." Mr. Meyer's study was completed
under a Fellowship established at the University
of Michigan by the Conference on Jewish Rela-
tions. The Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit
cooperated with the Conference on Jewish Rela-
tions to make possible the compilation and tabula-
tion of statistical facts about the Jewish population
in Detroit. The original study is in the possession
of the Jewish Welfare Federation as well as the
University of Michigan.
Professor Levin's article was written exclusively

for The Jewish News, but other periodicals are
welcome to reprint 1t

