RAPID DROP IN BIRTH-RATE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22337, 26 February 1938, Page 4

RAPID DROP IN BIRTH-RATE

+—.

POSITION IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

ClTIOlt OXTB OWII CO«B«SPOKDEHT.)

LONDON, February 2.

New Zealand's declining birth-rate was one of the topics discussed by Dr. G. F. McCleary at a meeting of the Eugenics Society at Burlington House, London. Dr. McCleary has a personal acquaintance with New Zealand and the other Dominions, and New Zealand figured largely in the lecture and the animated discussion that followed it.

The lecturer began by saying that decline of fertility might be thought natural in crowded countries, but in the new countries of the Commonwealth, where there was no overcrowding, decline in fertility was equally marked. In Australia and New Zealand—where the people were so British that even in their warm climates they stood up to drink their beer at a bar counter instead of adopting the outdoor cafe of the Continent —the birth-rate had declined rapidly since 1888.

The Australian birth-rate reached a record low level of 16.39 in 1934, and was 17.1 in 1937. In New Zealand the rate fell from over 40 in 1875-79 to 25 in 1899, rose to 27.5 in 1908, was 16.2 in 1935, and 16.6 in 1936. In both countries the recent rate was insufficient for the maintenance of the population.

In Australia there was no problem of depressed racial fertility, as the aboriginals, 60,000 in number, seemed to be dying out. In New Zealand, however, the gifted Maori people were endowed with high vitality, and they had been in the main treated with a consideration which was unfortunately rare. They had produced citizens of whom New Zealanders as a whole were proud. Not until 1913 were Maori births first registered. In the five years to 1936 the Maori birth-rate was 41.6, and death-rate 18, while the European rates were 16.6 and 8.3 respectively. Thus there was an excess of births in the case of the Maoris of 23.6, compared with only 8.3 for Europeans. The mean expectation of European life in New Zealand was already 68 years, so that there was, little prospect of further checking the tendency of the excess of European births over deaths to diminish. The difference in fertility of the two races was so great that it seemed possible that at some future time what the Maoris had lost by inferior armament they might regain by superior fertility. It would be seen that the Dominions to-day presented population problems of high scientific interest. "I am unable to regard the facts as mere interesting research material," the lecturer concluded. "I see in them an element of Greek tragedy, a mysterious force moving our race to an unknown but tragic destiny." Dr. McCleary, who was a pioneer in the maternity and child welfare movement in England, has recently published a book entitled "The Menace of British Depopulation," x which should be of wide interest in the Dominion-