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This article presents a study, discusses the trends in fertility of Mexican Americans. The present paper will examine trends in Mexican American fertility in comparison to Anglo American fertility from 1950 to 1970 in the southwestern states. Attention will be devoted primarily to cumulative fertility rather than current fertility since the former measure is the only one available for all the time periods and areas studied. The principal obstacle to investigation of the dynamics of the Mexican American population is the inconsistency in definition and identification of the population over a substantial time span. The Mexican American population has been variously defined operationally by race in the 1930 Census, by Spanish mother tongue in the 1940 Census, by Spanish surname in the 1950 and 1960 Censuses, and by questions on origin or descent in the November 1969 Current Population Survey. Information compiled in the 1970 Census will allow tabulations of data according to varying combinations of mother tongue, Spanish surname and Spanish origin or descent. At the time this paper went to press, the materials published from the 1970 Census relating to the Mexican American population consisted only of data for the population of Spanish language or Spanish surname.

The article presents the profiles of the differential statuses of the major ethnic and racial elements of the population of the United States with reference to a convenient norm and in comparison with each other. It also provides, a basis for conjecture about the relative salience of the different statuses for different populations, a special case of consistency analysis. The focus on racial problems has recently diverted attention from the substantial immigrant population in the U.S. In absolute terms the foreign-born population is still quite large. Admission of refugees around World War II and displaced persons under the Act of 1948 undoubtedly changed the characteristics of European migrants. These historical events are reflected in the Russian and German samples, for example, but census data do not permit us to disentangle their influence on the composition of the subsamples. In this paper, the author reports as a whole for African Americans, Mexican Americans, selected foreign born of significant numbers and for the native born of like foreign parentage.