POPULATION TRENDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 6, 7 July 1938, Page 8

POPULATION TRENDS

Forecasts are in the nature of things uncertain, and when the National Resources Committee reports to President Roosevelt that "the population of the United States will reach its peak of 158,000,000 in the year 1980, and thereafter will slowly decrease," it simply means that if present trends in births and deaths continue at the same rate a curve can be drawn leading to the conclusion stated. But forty years is long enough in this changing world for all sorts of things to happen. Events may occur and circumstances develop to alter the outlook one way or the other. The curve in the graph may steepen to postpone the peak which marks a stationary population, or it may flatten out at an earlier datejf the birth-rate drops more precipitously or the death-rate rises from some unforeseen cause. The report indeed qualifies its conclusion with the words, "unless births increase or immigration policies are altered." What applies to the U.S.A. applies equally to New Zealand, except that the peak preceding the decline is placed much earlier, in fact within a decade or so, with the same proviso "unless births increase or immigration policies are altered." Immigration is certainly j the quicker way of correcting a tendency towards decline, but with population trends in every country, except, perhaps, Russia and Japan, moving in the same direction towards stagnation, immigration, if it is to succeed, cannot be delayed too

long. One of the most surprising facts revealed in the United States report is that "the American Indian shows the-most rapid increase of all racial stocks." This corresponds to the Maori revival in New Zealand. Native races, once they become adjusted to their changed environment, show great powers of recuperation.