POPULATION TRENDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22987, 16 September 1936, Page 6

POPULATION TRENDS

The trends of population frequently in these enlightened days inspire gloomy prophecies. One of these has just been uttered by Commissioner David Lamb, of the Salvation Army, who, in an address to the British Association, declared that a declining population would sound the deathknell of the British Empire, which could not be held and developed in the face of steadily increasing population elsewhere. There is a temptation to inquire what country or countries the " elsewhere " implies. Perhaps Commissioner Lamb has in mind the thought of an eventual struggle for supremacy between the white and the coloured races of the world, concerning which the general decline in the birth-rate in white countries periodically gives rise to anxious speculation. There are, needless to say, other factors besides population that may be expected to influence the destiny of the British Empire. When problems concerning the consolidation of intraImperial- relations come to be considered for the purpose of fashioning a new Empire policy, the aim of which will be the welding of the various imperial units into a more compact whole, population will be accorded its rightful importance amongst them. It is to be imagined, however, that that importance will be incidental rather than paramount. Many countries other than those of the British Commonwealth are expressing concern over a falling birthrate—Germany, Austria, France and Italy, for instance. The Italian and German dictators have frequently issued appeals and offered inducements to their people to accelerate the rate of natural increase. While Italy has made little or no reproductive response, the statistics for Germany show what has been described as a "spectacular recovery" from 957,000 births in 1933—Germany's lowest yearly number—to 1,181,000 in 1934, which is almost back to the rate for 1928. Other European countries which show increases for 1934 as compared with the previous year are the United Kingdom, the Irish Free State, Poland and the Netherlands. The United Kingdom, with three per cent., had the lowest increase in the group. Nevertheless, according to one statistical source, any suggestion that a declining birth-rate is a world trend is quite inapplicable outside Europe. "Among Asiatic countries in which -records of births are kept," it was recently pointed out, "marked increases between 1921 and 1933—a similar twelve-year period for which statistics are accessible —are shown by Palestine, British India, Japan with her possessions Korea and Formosa, and the Philippines." No figures are available for China, but it may be presumed that a similar tendency would be observable there. Clear increases in the annual number of births are also shown by Egypt and Algeria, while the general trend in the Central and South American Republics is definitely upward. A general conclusion is that while the European world, in a collective sense, is facing the prospect of a steadily declining population, that prospect does not appear to be in store for Asiatic and other countries inhabited by the coloured peoples. If there is menace in Commissioner Lamb's "elsewhere," an examination of population trends in countries other than those covered by the term "European" will serve to locate it.