TIME AND POPULATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 55, 6 March 1937, Page 8

TIME AND POPULATION

I Italy's new seven-point programme for solving the birth-rate question ,snould teach us that this problem is not ensy of solution. For many years Italy has been seeking a remedy for the decline, though she, with Germany and Russia, has less cause than other European countries for uneasiness. The programme now submitted is, in its main features, an extension of measures hitherto' applied and their incorporation in the regular economic life. Marriage loans, preference of employment for fathers of large families and a policy of family wages have all been introduced in more or less experimental form. Now Italy has decided to extend them and make them permanent. The reason is that such measures hitherto have done little more than partially check the decline. This should be noted by those of our own people who, using such cliches as "the best immigrants are those born in the country," suggest that New Zealand's need for population can be easily met by natural increase.

Italian and German experience should convince us that it cannot, and as the rate of decline is accelerated it: becomes more difficult-to check. Before the natural increase problem is solved the decline may have become economically dangerous. By all means let us study this method of correction, but in the meantime we must also recognise that correction by immigration (while it is yet possible to obtain immigrants) can be more quickly and readily applied. It will give us time to introduce the more difficult solution. But time presses now, even for immigration. As the Hon. W. E. Barnard has pointed out in expounding his Five Million Club plan, a carefully designed immigration scheme is necessary to assure the benefits of greater population and avoid the difficulties created by haphazard methods. A scheme cannot be carefully designed hastily. Meanwhile Britain (and other European countries) are discovering population problems. Soon they may be loath to lose the settlers whom we seek.