With the appearance of the Report of the Royal Commission on Population and several volumes of ancillary papers, it may seem that the potentialities for fruitful statistical analysis of recent marriage and fertility data in this country have been exhausted, and that little fresh work can usefully be done on them until the extent of the experience has been enlarged by the passage of time.

There is, however, a wide area for statistical investigation that appears not yet to have been completely charted, in spite of the penetrating studies made by those who worked on behalf of the Royal Commission. The available data offer scope for the formulation of new techniques of analysis and presentation, and for examination by approaches different from those made by the Commission's demographers, which had, in the main, the particular purpose of ascertaining whether or not the people of this country are replacing themselves.