SPINSTERS AND BACHELORS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 154, 29 June 1907, Page 6

SPINSTERS AND BACHELORS.

SEXES EQUALISING IN NEW; ZEALAND. INTERESTING DEDUCTIONS FROM THE CENSUS. \XBy Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Friday. Statistics have a repejlant appearance to the man in the street, but they are necessary, and may even become interesting when the subject of the cyphering is suitable. For instance, out of piles of figures furnished by census enumerators the Registrar-General of New Zealand has evolved some very interesting conclusions, which . are made public for the first time this week. The 1906 census proves that gradually the sexes are equalising themselves In New Zealand. Naturally in the early days the pioneers whose wives accompanied them to the new and unknown colony were few, so the proportion of males to females about fifty years ago was two to one. Gradually the ladies have improved their numerical position. They threatened to overwhelm the rival sex in 190.1, when the percentage of females in the.population was 90.33 per cent of the number of males as against. 88.26 ten years before. But this rapid increase was not kept up, and the sterner sex may still have no fear of losing-elbow-room, for there are a hundred males in New Zealand to about eighfreight and three-quarter females.

Another interesting deduction to be made by comparison with previous census returns is that although the number to the square mile has nearly doubled in 25 years, the number of persons to an inhabited dwelling is steadily decreasing. It now stands at 4.82 occupants to each dwelling.

The distribution of sexes is remarkable. Canterbury and Otago have consistently showed an excess of spinsters aged 15 years and upwards over bachelors aged 20 years and upwards. In 1906 the spinsters outnumbered their gentlemen acquaintances by 2117 in Canterbury and 954 in Otago, but in all the other provinces gentlemen easily shownumerical superiority, Wellington to the tune of 4389, and Auckland 3383. Taking the colony as a whole, there are 9633 bachelors who could not get partners if there was a general determination to assort the population into pairs, though had the bold experiment been tried in 1901 no fewer than 3572 spinsters would have been left weeping " and lonely. "Xo doubt," says the matter of fact statistician, "the preponderance of bachelors in 1906 has been to a great extent brought about by increased arrivals of male population from abroad." Last year, as a matter of fact, the males arriving in the colony nearly doubled the arrivals of females.

The colony has not yet had to face the problem of crowding into the towns, at any rate, this question has not reached an acute stage, though -the balance is perilously near dropping on the side of the towns. Country population comprises 51.63 per cent, of the whole, and the figures show that the towns are drawing a larger proportion as time goes on.

It costs £25 3/5 to keep a prisoner in gaol for twelve months, and there were 2796 state boarded individuals during 1905, the proportion per 1000 of the population being 32.14. Our prison population, which is much less than that of New South Wales, has been reduced by 6.47 per ten thousand of the population in the last ten years.