Perhaps the best measure of the progressive increase of widowhood with advancing years is found by comparing the widowed with the married of each age group. This is done in the following table: The table shows the uniform and steady increase of widowhood for each sex with advancing years, and also the far greater proportion of widows than of widowers at any given age. This difference between the two sexes increases with age. Between 20 and 35 the proportion of widows to wives was about double that of widowers to husbands. At the next age period it was treble, at the next five times, at the next seven times, and at the latest age nine times. For this difference a number of cooperating causes may be assigned. As the husband is usually older than the wife and the chance of death increases with age, more marriages are broken by the death of the husband than by the death of the wife. Then, too, at the same age the mortality of men is usually rather greater than the mortality of women. And a widower is more likely than a widow to reenter the group of married by a second union. THE SINGLE. The small proportion of married in Cuba has already been mentioned (p. 118). Even if the consentual unions be included with the marriages, the proportion of the total was much less than in the United States (p. 135). The widowed, while very numerous with reference to the married, were not much more numerous than elsewhere with reference to the total or the adult population. There are no divorced persons in Cuba. The only other marital class, the single, must then be unusually numerous. For purposes of comparison with other countries, however, the persons living in consentual unions in Cuba should be classed with the single. In the following table the proportion of single to total population over 15 is given for the countries with which comparison would most naturally be made. The countries are arranged in the order of increasing proportion of single. 24662-10 1 Population 16+ is the basis. 2 Population 14+ is the basis. 3 Excluding persons living together by mutual consent. This table shows that the proportion of single among the adults of Cuba is higher than in any other considerable country known to statistics. In the United States not much more than one-third of the adults were single, while in Cuba over one-half and, including the persons living together in consentual unions, two-thirds were single. In the subsequent discussion the word single will be limited by excluding the persons living together by mutual consent as well as the married and widowed. In the following table the two sexes are compared: The excess of single males over single females, amounting to 83,729 is due partly to the excess of 48,471 males in the adult population and partly to the excess of 39,049 widows over widowers. The proportion of single decreases with advancing years, as follows: In Cuba over two-fifths of the population apparently go through life single, while in the United States only about one-eighteenth do so. Next to this noteworthy difference between the two countries the most interesting inference from the table is that the proportion of single does not decrease steadily from youth to old age, as might be expected and as it does in the United States. On the contrary, a distinct minimum is reached for men at 45-54 years of age and for women ten years earlier. After these ages the proportion of single increases. Some light is thrown on this difference by the following table: From this it appears that the increase in the proportion of single with advancing years was almost confined to the colored race. It is probably due in large part to the inclusion with the single of persons who had earlier in life lived in consentual unions, but whose married life had ended by separation of the parties through death or otherwise or who having no children living with them were classified as single although really belonging to the class of persons living together by mutual consent. LITERACY. A census can take cognizance of the degree of education of a people only as it is indicated by certain simple tests. These tests refer usually to formal or book education, not because that is necessarily the most important, but because it is the most easily tested. The tests used by the present census were attendance at school, ability to read, ability to write, and possession of higher education. It is obvious that attendance at school certifies nothing regarding a person's educational attainments, yet if the entire population is to be classed according to degree of education some assumption must be made regarding children attending school. It can not introduce serious error to assume that all children attending school were able to read and write, and all under 10 years of age and not attending school were not able to read. On these assumptions the population of Cuba may be classified as follows: In the preceding table the classes are not mutually exclusive, but each succeeding class includes all those in the preceding. From that table the following may be derived by taking the differences in the successive numbers of the preceding: From this table it appears that the three classes of those able to read but unable to write, those with higher education, and those not answering the educational questions, including together little more than one-thirtieth of the total population, were numerically insignificant. Attention may therefore be centered on the other two classes. The several provinces of Cuba had the following proportion of persons able to read: Habana province had the largest and Pinar del Rio the smallest proportion of persons able to read. Earlier in this analysis (p. 76) it was shown that Habana province had the largest and Pinar del Rio the smallest proportion of urban population. That the two vary together will appear more clearly from the following: Literacy: Habana. Puerto Principe. Matanzas. Santa Clara. Santiago. Pinar del Rio. Provinces in the order of— Urban population: Puerto Principe. Pinar del Rio. It seems probable, therefore, that the ability to read is more usual in Cuban cities than it is in the rural districts. In the following table the facts are given for the 14 cities separately reported in Table XIX. |