GERMAN POPULATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 August 1946, Page 8

GERMAN POPULATION

DECREASE IN NUMBERSEXPECTED 36,000,000 IN 50 YEARS NEW YORK, August 1. The German. . population in Europe, at present estimated at 72,000,000, will decrease by 50 per cent, in the n'ext 50 years, according to an analysis prepared for the New York Herald-Tribune by Professor Heinz Sauermann, a noted German economist, who is Dean of Economics at Frankfurt University and economic adviser to the American Military Government. Professor Sauermann disclosed that in the rural districts of Germany the deathrate was twice as high as the birthrate, in medium-sized-cities 300 per cent, higher, and in the larger cities 400 to 500 per cent, higher than the birth-rate. Professor Sauermann and his associates before the war made a population survey, estimating that by the year 2000 Germany’s population would be down to 43,000,000, but in the new estimate, based on war casualties and war’ effects, they have sharply revised this figure. The latest survey estimates the German war casualties at 7,500,000, comprising 4,000,000 soldiers and 1,000,000 civilians killed and 2,500,000 invalids in need of permanent medical care. This means that whereas in 1943 for every 100 persons fit to work there were 70 incapable of working. In the coming years every, working person will feed one incapable of working. Germany is becoming a nation exceedingly great in the number of its old men and women, with a surplus of 4,500,000 -women.