ENGLAND'S STATISTICS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 41, 24 May 1935, Page 7

ENGLAND'S STATISTICS

\VOMEN OUTNUMBER MEN.

SOME POPULATION FIGURES

(From the Guardian's Special Corres-

pondent—By Air Mail)

LONDON, April 13. The two healthiest places in England and Wales, accepting the average age of the inhabitants as a guide, are Thurstanland, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and Aberayron,

in Cardigan. In both these villages

average age is 40j§. This is but > one example of the interesting dis- *. coveries to be made in the general population tables given in the final issue of the Registrar-General's report on the 1931 census just published. Births, marriages, divorces and migrations are covered in this statistical- compilation from the manifold information provided by the returns. We learn, for instance, that on the census date women outnumbered men by 686,357; four persons lived in urban to vone in rural areas; 97,932 Welsh people spoke no English; and Poles provided the highest figure of any foreign-born nationals.

The Scottish "invasion" continued to

increase. ( --%■ Nine men and 11 women under the ages of 20 were divorced, six of them being below the age of 18. The' youngest widow was only 16, and there were two -widowers of 17. Thirty boys and 375 girls had married at the age-of 16. There were 156 centenarians, but only 27 of them were men. Nearly a thousand persons had reached the age of 95, and altogether 2278 were between 95 and 99. • Of the total population of England and Wales — 39,952,377 —19,133,010 were men and 20,819,367 were women. Against 8,000,459 living in rural areas, there were 31,951,918 in . urban districts. Lancashire had the biggest county population with 5,039,455. Yorkshire (4,389,679) and London (4,379,003) occupied second and third positions. London County's

population ha^s been declining since

1901, when it attained the peak of , 4,536,541. The total population included 366,486 Scots, or nearly three times the number here 80 years ago, and 303,676 persons who were born in what is now 'the Irish Free State. Marital statistics produce some of the most interesting figures. Of the total number of males, over half — 9,910,795 —were single. Divorced women greatly outnumbered divorced men—19,169 to 13,546. In Greater London the disparity was even more striking—749B women to 4834 men. The "average age" section was illuminating. Whereas the average age over the whole population was 33.6, Chelsea, with an average of 36, provided the "healthiest" London region.