SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN SWEDEN.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 57, 23 March 1937, Page 4

SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN SWEDEN.

The problem of adequately populating this Dominion has of late been commanding a good deal of public discussion, partHy as the result of the Hon. W. E. Barnard's widespread addresses upon it. What with a dwindling birth-rate and a virttial ban for years upon compensating immigration schemes, our annual increases have come perilously »ear the vanishing point. The encouragement of immigration seems to be the first recourse of those who would seek to cure the defect, though, of course, that is not one on which continual reliance can be plaeed. In fact, it is very doubtful whether, even in the Old Country there are many ready to respond to Our invitation unless it is accompanied by strongly attractive conditions. In default of a successful call upon Great Britain, it has been suggested that resort might be had to Continental Europe, with a special referenee to Scandinavian peoples as having in the past provided us with the very best and most assimilable type of immigrant. However, from a Stoekhoim report recently published there would seem to be but little hope of getting any great aeeession of population from Sweden, the biggest of the Scandinavian oountries. From the figures adduced it would seem that Sweden is in an even worse plight than ourselves so f ar as the "natural increase' excess of births over deaths — is concerned. In fact, the recently presented report of a committee set up to investigate the position makes it clear that the present Swedish birth-rate is about 80 per cent. below the minimum level required even to I3|aintain a stationary population. About one half, it is said, of all Swedish households have O only one child or none. It will.be necessary for this propor tion to be reduced to at least one-third and for the remaining two-thirds to have each at least four children if, on the present marriage-rate, the population is not actually to fall off. Sweden has of recent years been held up by Socialists as haVing evolved a system of internal finance that was helping 3 very greatly to assure the wellbeing and prosperity of her people. In faCt, it has been suggested that our own Govern- . ment is building a good deal on a similar foundation. It therefore comes as matter of surprise that the investigating committee attributes the low birth-rate to adverse social conditions atnong the working classes. Overcrowding, it is averred, is much worse than it has been in England, the Swedish architects and builders having produced a standardised tenement of "one room and kitchen." It is in tenements of this type that 40 per cent.- of all Swedish urban families and more than half of all working class families with more than three children are ^housed." The average yearly incoxne of each Swedish wage-eaxner is put down at £86 a year, while for two-thirds of them it works out at something less than £50. The result is, of coUrse, that Under-nourishment is prevalent practically everywhere, and naturally Is worse as the number of each individual family increases. As the Times says in its comment on these revelations, all ijhis must astonish those who have based their conception of Sweden 's prosperity on the ample superficial evidences of it provided by the eapital city. However, the facts and figures now presented by the coxn* mittee show that the prosperity of which we have heard so much has touched only a fringe of the whole population. This, in turn, suggests that after all the often lauded Swedish system of national finance cannot have done a very great deal ■ in the way of bettering Conditions for the great the Swedish people.