When the Irish do marry they produce more babies per couple than anybody. Why then. with their devotion to family life. do so many fail to marry? Successive governments in Eire have had to contend with two of the evils which independence had been designed to cure. a high level of unemployment and a high rate of emigration. It came as an unpleasant surprise to the Cosgrave government that the emigration flood did not immediately dry up when Ireland won her independence. It was even more disheartening for De Valeras government to find that its selfsufficiency remedy was also useless. In the year 1950 over 40.000 men. women. and children emigrated. nearly 1.5 percent of the population. and Ireland became the only country in the world whose population declined in the first half of the 20th century. It was easy for the Irish statistical office to prove that. by 1950. the population had actually risen slightly again. in spite of emigration. But this did not conceal the fact that Ireland had the lowest marriage rate of any country in the civilized world. The average age at which men married was 35--considerably higher in the rural areasa curious situation for a country which venerated the family as an institution.
Keywords matched
emigration emigrated