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This article deals with Brazil as one of the details of European expansion. It is peculiarly concerned with the circumstances and conditions under which migration and settlement occurred on this particular European frontier and the series of cultural consequences stemming therefrom, especially as they have affected the survival of African stock imported into this area as one of the incidents of its settlement. Peculiarly interesting in this connection is the fact that, although probably more Africans were imported into Brazil than into any other region of the New World, and they at one time constituted, in centers of concentration like Bahia, an overwhelming majority of the population, Africans as a racial unit is throughout Brazil gradually, but to all appearances inevitably, disappearing. The Africans and the mixedbloods are represented throughout the entire occupational scale, although, as is to be expected, considering the original slave status of Africans, their relatively disadvantaged position upon receiving their liberty, and the comparatively brief time they have enjoyed a freely competitive status, the darker portion of the population is still concentrated in the low-pay, low-status employments.

This article seeks to explore fertility, social mobility and urban migration in Brazil. In the course of a sample survey of the adult population of eight cities in south-central Brazil conducted in 1959 and early 1960, material was obtained respecting total family size after ten or more years of marriage. This was analyzed in order to determine what variations in mean family size could be observed in relation to class status and social mobility. The results show that fertility is inversely related to class status, and that for a given class, the lower the class of origin, the higher the fertility. A tentative estimate suggests that the net effect of social mobility had been to reduce the sample's total births by something of the order of 3 per cent.