POPULATION PROBLEM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1939, Page 8

POPULATION PROBLEM

NEGROES IN AMERICA. Of all the populations questions in the United States perhaps the most perplexing is that of its 13.000.000 Neg-' roes, writes Mr Joseph G. Harrison in, the Christian Science Monitor. Once almost entirely located in the South, in post-war years they flocked north in great waves that drained the cotton fields of many a deep South county. Now crowded into Northern slums they bitterly complain that they are "the first fired, the last hired," while in the South itself, still the home of 79 per cent of America's Negroes, the rapidly increasing white population is reacing after jobs once traditionally reserved for Negroes. Meanwhile, a still further change in America's population has been going on. carrying with it incalculable social implications. This is the steady ageing of the popu-1 lation. with its increase in older peo-j pie and its decrease in youth. In Civil | War days persons over 65 years of, age formed but 2.7 per cent ol thC| population, whereas today they foim; 6.3 per cent and axpected to form 12 j per cent by 1980. Not only will this! mean a drop in the educational load and rise in the need lor old-age insur-1 ance and aid. but it should result, wej are told, in a growing national con-j versatism and in a population that: should roach its peak in numbers about 40 years hence and then begin a gradual decline.