FRENCH DISQUIET

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 214, 6 June 1930, Page 11

FRENCH DISQUIET

LOWER BIRTHRATE The National Alliance for the Increase of the French Population has published a commentary on the re-cently-published statistics, which show an excess amounting to 12,564 of deaths over births. This commentary does not adopt the explanation that the chief trouble is the heavy infant mortality, • although this is certainly part of the explanation, for it Is higher than in most other countries. While admitting that deaths have heavily increased and births only moderately diminished, the National Alliance points out that until 1909 the total of deaths was always greater than 741,000, the figure of last year, but was nevertheless always exceeded by births, except during four years, when the deaths reached 800,000. The births, on the other hand, have been steadily declining since 1863, when they were more than one million. They bad fallen to 879.000 in 1900, to 790,000 in 1913, and 728,000 in 1929. The increase in deaths last year was due to the exceptionally cold winter, but the decrease in births to deliberate limitation.

Moreover, 10 per cent, of last year's births are those of the children of foreigners, and marriages, which are already decreasing, will be still less from 1935 onwards in consequence of the small number of persons born during the war. In fact, in a few years the loss of population in France will be 200,000 a year, if not more. Meanwhile the annual increase of Italy is 375,000, of Germany 350,000. and Spain 200,000. That of Great Britain is not mentioned, perhaps because it Is not very useful to the French argument, for the excess of births, which had risen from 492,000 in 1910 to 593,000 in 1020, had fallen in 1925 to 284,000.