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Hokitika Guardian, 6 November 1936, Page 4

There were in England and Wales, in 1921, 10,795,000 women of over fifteen and under thirty years of age, this section being responsible for replenishing the population from generation to generation, writes Mr D. V. Glass in his remarkable book, “The Struggle for Population.” In thirty years all these women will have passed beyond the potentially fertile age groups, and what, briefly, we want to know is by how many women in the fertile are groups they will be replaced. The first fact we must have is, therefore, the miinber of female children born to each woman now passing through the . child-bearing period. Secondly,. since many of these children will die, we must also know wlmb proportion of female children born to-day will themselves suryive long enough to pass through the efrilet-y bearing period, and we obtain this information from life tables. By combining the two facts of fertility ami survival, we obtain the net reproduction rate and when that rate is 1.0 it means that, given the existing 'conditions of fertility and mortality, each women is. just replacing iherseif in the next generation. In -1921 the rate for England and Wales was 1.07, indicating that if fertility and mortality remained constant the population would continue to grow. But by 1931 the position bad worsened considerably, and the net reproduction rate for that year showed'the changed circumstances. Even allowing for the. fall in mortality which took place during the iutrevening period the rate was only 0.81, so that fertility in 1931 was not high enough to, replace the childbearing section of the population.