Note 248-2 — Chapter II

Rossi, Cours d'Economie politique, I, 371, estimates the cost of bringing up a child to its 16th year at a minimum of 1,000 francs. Hence, a country with 1,000,000 births annually, in which only 50 per cent. reach that age, would lose 500,000,000 francs per annum. However, over one-third of the children in question die in the first years of childhood, and the rest do not reach on an average their 16th year, but die between the age of 7 and 8: Bernouilli, Populationistik, 259. Engel estimates Saxony's "man-capital" at 4 times the value of all the land in the country, and at 10 times the value of all movable property. (Sächs., Statist. Zeitschr., 1855, No. 9. Preuss. Statist. Zeitschr., 1861, 324.) One of the chief advocates of the view that there is an investment of capital in every child is Chadwick in the opening address delivered by him before an English learned society at Cambridge: Statist. Journal, Dec., 1862. Lancashire alone pays a penalty per annum for preventable deaths of £4,000,000, for the funeral and medical expenses; to say nothing of the capital lost (506).