Dunno. ^_^

All right, all right, I'll check.

According to Christopher Tolkien, the text that gave rise to Appendix A included a statement that they have few children, so many as four being rare, and that, quoting the Professor:

To these they are devoted, often rather fiercely: that is, they may treat them with apparent harshness... but they defend them with all their power, and resent injuries to them even more than to themselves.

The picture we're given is of a people wherein roughly two-thirds are able to reproduce (ie, 1/3 drop out due to being unattached males - the unmarried women I'm neglecting for mathematical simplicity). If they average three children, then you're still getting 1 child back for each member of their parents' generation. That produces a fairly static population count.

It's actually quite likely that the number of children is heavily ritualised. They certainly have rituals regarding when to have them: virtually every firstborn we have record of is 100 years younger than his father, and every second born is 110 years after his father. (Thorin is actually an exception to this; his younger brother was born only five years after him.) Tolkien even states this explicitly, stating: [Women] are seldom seen in genealogies. They join their husbands' families. But if a son is seen to be 110 or so years younger than his father, this usually indicates an elder daughter.

The more I read about them, the more I realise that dwarves were deeply into (non-religious) ritual. They all marry at the same age, have their children at the same age. They'll follow their kings into virtually anything. Their women stay at home, quite possibly voluntarily. They speak a language which hasn't changed since their species was created. They carry racial grudges as deep as chasms.

All of which says that the ones who buck the trend - Gimli Elf-friend, those women who don't marry - must be very strong personalities indeed.

hS