WELL PROVIDED

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 28, 3 February 1932, Page 7

WELL PROVIDED

THE PEOPLE OF CANADA

GLANCE AT STATISTICS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOtrVEB, 22nd December.

Canadians have nearly font times as much money per capita in the bank this year as they had in the golden «ra which followed the turn of the century. They have ten million dollars more in (avings banks than last year, and just about aB much as they had in the boom year of 1929, which preceded the stock market crash. The total life insurance in force is fifteen times as much as at the beginning of the century, and now aggregates £1,300,000,000 —a gain of 50 per cent, for each year, or £130 of life insurance for every man, woman, and child in the Dominion. During the golden era, immediately following 1901, there was £11 12s per head in the bank; this year the amount is £43—nearly.. four times as much. On. top of these bank deposits and insurance policies, the people of Canada hold £1,200,000,000 worth of Dominion, provincial, and /municipal bonds—£7o per head of population, and £540 per bondholder. ' • HOUSING CONDITIONS. Twenty years ago, in 1911, 368,000 persons, of a total population of 7,000,000, or 5 per cent., lived in one room. Ten years later, (the proportion had fallen to 2.8 per cent. To-day, with a population slightly over 10,000,000, the occupants of one room number less than 200,000, and nearly 50 per cent, of all the dwellings in the Dominion contain more than six rooms. More important still, upwards of 60 per cent, of all the homes/in Canada are owned by the families who live in them. These facts are presented by the Dominion Bureau, of Statistics to offset undue publicity given to unemployment, especially on the Prairie. • The Statistician points out that there are more people gainfully employed to-day that in the peak employment season of 1926. In the past ten years, the average life span has been increased by five years; the number of hospitals has increased by 150 in eight years. There are 600 babies born every day in Canada. Every child gets two more years schooling than did the 1913 child. A boy or girl to-day has ten chance* to one, compared with the boy or girl of 1913, of going to a University.

By special arrangement Reuter'i world service. In addition to otlier special sources \Ot Information, la used In the compilation of the orerseaa Intelligence published In this Issue, and «1I rUhts thereto u» Austral!* and New tetUnd ai* memo,