POPULATION—ANOTHER POST-WAR PROBLEM

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 3, 31 August 1943, Page 4

POPULATION —ANOTHER POST-WAR PROBLEM

THE imperative need for a larger English-speaking population in Australia and New Zealand to ensure post-war security in the South Pacific has been stressed in a recently published book written by Mr George W. Keeton. He ; assesses the population needs of New Zealand at 5,000,000 and of Australia at 20,000,000. There can be no doubt that the figures of Mr Keeton are sound and that the: British Dominions in the Pacific must give serious consideration to the problem of securing a greatly increased population. Excluding war casualties, the population of New Zealand is now stationary and with a falling birth rate it fnust decline. In fact, it has been estimated that at the present rate the population in sixty years will have declined to what it was in 1880. The number of old people in the community is increasing and the number of children decreasing. In 1880, children under fourteen years of age formed 42.53 per cent of the population while they now represent only 24.47 per cent. Of present-day marriages, 24 per cent are without issue, only 16 per cent have three children (thus barely replacing the parents) and 22 per cent have four or more children. The birth rate per 1000 of population showed an increase in 1940 to 21.19, the highest since 1924, but it has been as low as 16.5 in the intervening years. While the rate of natural increase in the population has been decreasing, the problem has been aggravated by the cessation of immigration. In the four de-J cades' up till 1928, the number of permanent settlers arriving from overseas was 10,271, 74,159, 57,336 and 74,085 respectively, but from 1929 to 1938 the number of persons leaving the country exceeded the arrivals by 2128. The problem of an increased population for New Zealand can only be solved by immigration. A vastly increased number of inhabitants is essential to defend the country and an increase will be necessary to spread the individual tax burden which will be heavy after the war. A successful immigration policy can be made possible, only by the development of secondary industries, especially those that will have a foreign market for their products. No rapid increase, in the population can be achieved by land set-' tlement, no matter how close, for 1000 people can be sustained by an acre of land devoted to secondary industry while there must be a sparse distribution in rural areas.