POPULATION PROBLEMS.

Evening Star, Issue 21992, 30 March 1935, Page 14

POPULATION PROBLEMS.

Ax arresting statement was made in the House of Representatives yesterday by the Minister of Education. In moving the second reading of the Education Law Amendment Bill, Mr Smith said the New Zealand school population had fallen by 19,000 since 1931. The measure was introduced in the interests of teachers who arc affected when a school falls ip grade because of reduced attendance. When this happens the board in the district concerned must notify the teacher accordingly, and ho is then offered a transfer to a school of his former grade. If one in that grade is not available, he retains the higher rate of salary for twelve months. The object of the amending Bill is to grant a further concession by extending the period to two years. In reply to a question the Minister said the, application of the new provision would be limited to teachers whose- salaries are ofer the scale when the Bill is passed, very reasonably declaring that there would be endless difficulty «in making the danse retrospective. Mr Clyde Carr pointed out that the Government Statistician had estimated that in the years 1934-3(3 there would be 6.400 fewer children between five and fourteen years ol age in New Zealand. The Minister said that the decrease mentioned by him was not entirely due to the exclusion of five-ycar-old children. The cry of the falling birth-rate has been heard in the coun-

tries of the Empire lor years, and the question is being much discussed in England at the moment. .A circular issued by the Board of Education estimates that by 1948 (he six millions of children on the roils of the popular schools in 1913 will have been replaced by not more than 4.200.000, and that within a few years afterwards the number will be down to four millions. A crumb of comfort for this dominion is that in spite of the fact that its birthrate is now low compared with most other countries, yet so small is New Zealand’s death-rate that it still ranks midway among the nations ns regav§; the rate of natural increase. Take as an example the case of Hungary, where the birth-rate is 24 per I,ooo' and the natural increase 7.7. In this dominion the figures are 18.0 and 9.7. New Zealand has the lowest death-rate in'the world. The conditions, therefore, arc favourable for the support of a large population. It has been the dream of statesmen of the past; but this has faded away before the hard fact of a progressive fall in the birth-rate,- which the evidence suggests is likely to continue. Commenting on the British Board of Education’s circular. Dr F. H. Spencer, a prominent educationist, remarks that in the matter of population England is faced with a situation which has not been paralleled since the Black Death. For a continuous rise in population there has been substituted a relatively sharp fall—at least in the number of children of school age. This is a grave problem. If the figures in other countries revealed a similar position there would be nob the same occasion for comment, but though some of them show a declining birth-rate, it is of much smaller extent than that among the white populations of the Empire. Dr Spencer expresses a thought that is well worth pondering. He says: “ We piust, therefore, take pains to secure that, in the immediate future, we make up in the quality of our people what we lack in numbers. If this be accomplished a diminishing population may not be the index of national decadence, but the accompaniment of a more rigorous and a finer national life.”