WHEN THE POPULATION CEASES GROWING

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 232, 2 October 1935, Page 16

WHEN THE POPULATION CEASES GROWING

Changes in the structure and psychology of society so vast that they can hardly be over-estimated seem in prospect now that we are approaching an era of stationary population. Hitherto the continually increasing population in America, Great Britain and other countries determined tho character of their economic life and their manner of thinking about the future. It now appears certain —according to forecasts which have proved almost completely accurate in tho past—that within a few years Britain’s population will become stable. About 20 years after Britain stops growing America is expected to reach its maximum population. In that case tho United States will —within a generation at the most—come to. the end of its habit of thinking in terms of constant expansion. For many years tho frontier played a dominant jiart in American history, serving as a social safety valve and-an outlet for the energies of an increasing people. But the American frontier has passod. Similarly, the British frontier —the overseas Empire which served for Britain much as the West served for America—has largely closed. Settlers are neither so necessary nor so welcome, economic opportunities are diminished and the paths of Empire are hedged with immigration restrictions. (■British emigration overseas for the last three years actually has been less than immigration to Britain.) The British population seems due to ••each its peak about the year 1940. In America the maximum population (about 148,000,000) will be reached, it

Changes of All Kinds BRITAIN’S EARLY STABILITY

is predicted, between 1960 and 1970,and it will decline to some 140,000,000 by the year 2000. Even Germany—though the Nazis urge a higher birth rate —seems destined to follow a similar path, Ernst Kahn predicting the peak of population for 1940. Tho French population has been for several years approximately stationary. Thus, within less than a generation we shall grow accustomed to populations that remain much the same year after year. As one result, the proportion of children under 15 would be reduced by half, while the proportion of persons over 65 would bo 24 times greater than at present; and for the United States it has been computed that by 1980, those between 50 and 69 years of age will comprise 24 per cent, of the total as against 13.9 per cent, iu 1930. Tho population will be, on the whole, less youthful and perhaps less optimistic and less energetic. - When the population ceases to grow, new houses will be needed only to replace old ones (in which case such problems as slum clearance should be easy to solve). Fewer schools will be re-

quired, since there will be a smaller proportion of children. Food supplies will not need to be increased or new means of transport built. Agriculture will not expand. Building of all kinds may bo expected to slacken. There will be less employment in the capital goods industries such as iron, steel, mining, brick-making, lumbering. Municipalities will not need capital for continual expansion of public services like water supply and sewage systems. Economic changes of all kinds will be slower. Tho demand for capital will be less and interest rates, like the rent of land, will decline. Fewer new factories will be built. There will be fewer and less vigorous booms —and less severe depressions. There will be more wealth per capita, but it will not bo spent in tho same way. A man with £2,000 to spend does not buy the same things as a man with £1,000; he buys about the sme amount of food and shelter, but spends more on recreation, books, travel —for luxuries and cultural pursuits. Provision of new jobs for men thrown out of work by obsolescence of a given trade will be more difficult,

since the opportunities for new industries will be fewer; but the building of comfortable houses for everybody should be a simple task. Since a stable population permits higher living standards not merely in physical comfort but in cultural and educational opportunity, a stationary population might become a more highly civilised population. It should, at any rate, facilitate the final solution of the economic problem. tYhen the number of consumers is fairly fixed the? adjustment of production to consumption should be less difficult, and over-investment and underspending should not be impossible to remedy. For over investment and excessive borrowing, such as took place in America before the slump, are characteristic of the psychology of an expanding nation; and this state of inind, if the population forecasts are correct, is one of which the advanced nations soon will have to rid themselves. Population stability should contribute not only to economic but also to political stability. There is no pretext for political expansion which is quite so useful, or so often used, as that of a growing population in need of additional territory; and no League of Nations, non-aggression pacts or armament agreements would, in the long run, serve so effectively to reduce the danger of war as a decline in the birtli rate in the aggressive, ultranationalistic countries. There seems no immediate likelihood of this happening in Asia. But in spite of official propaganda in favour of fecundity, it seems definitely to be happening in Europe.