WORLD BIRTH RATE

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 April 1932, Page 4

WORLD BIRTH RATE

SHOWS A BIG DROP GENEVA, March 22. Since the beginning of the twentieth century the world has been following two general tendencies as regards natural increase in population. These consist of a double movement in the decline of the birth rate and also of the death rate.

The maximum of these movements has been attained in Germany, where, since the beginning of the century, the decline in the birth rate has attained 47 per cent, and the death rate decline 39 per cent. These are the conclusions that have just beep reached by the International Health Organisation of the League of Nations.

The statistics are based on twentysix European countries and three nonEuropean countries—namely, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The. variation in the different countries, however, is very marked.

In Germany, for example, the absolute decline in birth rate is forty times greater than iu Portugal and five times that in France.

Japan is the only country in ths group studied that has had an increase in birth rate. Japan leads the rest of the world with a natural population increase of 900,000 annually. The United States comes, next with about 870,000 persons.

The States studied above constitut° about cne-third of the entire pcpulathe world.