PROBLEMS OF POPULATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 127, 31 May 1935, Page 6

PROBLEMS OF POPULATION.

There are main lines and side lines of great importance in Dr. Cr. C. Billing's address to the Science Congress at Dunedin 011 "Some Economic Effects of a Stationary Population." The principal facts of our vital statistics arc well enough known, though possibly only a comparatively few people realise their full bearing on national development. The nonMaori population of this country has been increasing lately at the rate of only 10,000 a year, compared with 27,000. a year a decade igo, so that if we are not at the point of being stationary we arc low enough for us to take serious stock of our position. There is, first )f all, the danger of a country so sparsely populated being a temptation to other nations, ind then there is the fact that the "overhead" expenses of our development are out of proportion to the number of people served. 3ut, as Dr. Billing points out, there are other jonsiderations. Economists arc studying the effects on industry. As the birth rate declines md the expectation of life increases, the proportions in the middle age and old age 'roups tend to increase, and this , has m effect 011 the kinds of goods in lemaml. Dr. Billing mentions as an nteresting fact bearing on this change in the :omposition of age groups that whereas in LS9I, when the Liberal-Labour regime began, he' majority of members of the Cabinet were inder 50, the members of the Cabinets of 1931 md 1934 were all over that age. There s the modifying factor that in the early days >f the Liberal-Labour movement youth and rigour were naturally in command, but )r. Billing's point is worth consideration. At he present time the average age of the Cabinet is well over 50. There appear lo be ;wo Ministers over 70; three are over CO; md the rest are between , fifty and sixty, riiere is no parallel in New Zealand polities ;o the position of Mr. Anthony Eden, one of he arbiters of Europe's destinies at the age >f 37, or Mr. Hore-Belisha, who at 3G is wrestling with the demon on the roads of England. This is a contrast that should be •arefully considered by the Reform-United ['us —we mean federation —when it considers its appeal to the country.