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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 discusses the effect of alternative age adjustment procedures on the analysis of urban mortality patterns. Analyses of mortality differences among populations need a single index of the overall mortality experience of each population. The conclusions one draws about the nature of mortality's correlates are a function of the type age adjustment used. In this paper housing was more important than income in explaining variations in the crude death rate and the indirect standardized rate. However, income was more important than housing in explaining variations in the direct standardized rate. Indirect standardization in itself is not necessarily enough to eliminate the compositional effect of age. Attention must be given to the extent to which there is a correspondence between the standard population's age-specific rates and those for the population studied. Census tracts, since their populations are comparatively small, are quite subject to great fluctuations in the number of deaths per year in the different age categories.