TAXED SINGLENESS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 79, 1 October 1923, Page 6

TAXED SINGLENESS

In the list of nations for which the particulars are given in a standard reference year-book, Prance is shown as having the lowest yearly birth rate—lß.7 per thousand of the population. As the death rate is 18.4 per thousand (almost double that of New Zealand), the "natural increase" is almost negligible. The neighbours of France are much more prolific countries. The death rate of Spain is 12.5, and the birth, rate 21.4. In Germany 29.8 are born while 16.2 die; in Belgium the figures are 23.7 and 15.2. New Zealand's is the lowest birth rate among the Dominions, 26.3, with a death rate of only 9.5. We do not feel that our population is growing oppressively fast, though there is an annual margin of, roughly, 17 per thousand. France gains by natural increase only 3 per 10,000 each year, and it can well be understood why, in her peculiar strategical position, her almost stationary population is a source of alarm. Efforts to keep the existing cradles full by persuasion have hitherto failed. Singularly little is said about the fact, which should be at least as alarming, that France has much the highest death rate of the low birth-rate countries. As high death rates usually owe much of their magnitude to the failure of children to grow up, one would have expected that a campaign for the improvement of this ' figure would have been pursued as vigorously as that for a .higher birth rate.

Taxation of bachelors is an obvious method of attempting to increase the population, and the age of the idea is indicated by its popularity as a subject of stale jests. This desperate remedy has been applied in France, and, to the disgust of unmarried women, seems, on the evidence of the cable message published to-day, to be on the eve of extension to spinsters. Their protest against being penalised because, owing to their being more numerous than men, all women cannot marry, is one that should command attention as well as sympathy. ' The onus, in such conditions, is on the men. The high cost of married life no doubt hinders the natural increase, of population, but unless it is the only serious check, which is unlikely, the taxation of " single blessedness " can be but a partial remedy. The country that needs more births must seek them by moral suasion, of which, of course, taxation can be regarded only as a rather brusque variety. Propaganda establishes fashions, and the years of discussion by France of this difficult problem seem to have produced some results.' The President of the Marseilles Congress of Natality declared the other day that families are again becoming fashionable in social circles. It is the national conscience rather than the individual purse that needs to be patiently dug at.