POPULATION OF BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22016, 13 February 1937, Page 3

POPULATION OF BRITAIN

PEAK LEVEL EXPECTED SOON NOTED ECONOMIST'S WARNING LONDON", January 7. Sir William Beveridge, the economist, said yesterday that in another 25 years this country would be in a panic about its population. He was speaking at the conference of the Geographical Association. At the same time Mr D. Victor Glass, a leading member of the Eugenics Society, was telling the conference of the Educational Association that the peak level of population would soon be reached. Both conferences were being held in London;- ' . . Sir William said all the forces of the State should be used to make child-bearing as safe and painless as possible to every mother, irrespective of economic conditions, and good family allowances should be paid. * "For the last 17 years economists have been talking about nothing but banking policy and the gold standard, but the centre of the sciences is going to be the problem of population," said Sir William. Efforts to increase the population in Germany and Italy had been a comparative failure, but he did not think that that was at all important. Neither of those countries had really set out to do all that modern society could do to induce people to have more children. In Italy the reward for having children was about the value of a dog license in this country. At the same conference Professor C. B. Fawcett described the income tax allowance for children as "a bad joke on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer." It did not account, he said; for much more than a penny in the pound in the cost of raising a child. In his speech to the Educational Association. Mr Glass declared that the present unplanned, chaotic kind of economic system would not meet adequately the problems of a stationary or declining population. Only under some form of-rationally planned civilisation would we be likely to produce an environment in which high fertility and a high standard of life would both be possible. , If fertility remained unchanged Britain's population would soon reach its peak level. After a transition period of slow decline it would begin to fall off at the rate of 24 per cent, in every generation. At that rate of decline it would be reduced to about 15 per cent, of its previous size in just over 200 years. The rate of decline could be reduced slightly by further reductions in mortality, but the effect would be insignificant.