GROWTH OF POPULATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20152, 12 January 1929, Page 10

GROWTH OF POPULATION.

For most practical purposes, in comparisons between the populations of Australia and New Zealand, it is generally regarded as sufficiently accurate to say that the Commonwealth has fivo times as many people as the Dominion. There is, however, a wide margin of error in this rate, for it would require more than 1,000,000 more in Australia to be correct. According to the latest official estimate by the Commonwealth Statistician, the population at the end of 1927 was 6,23-1,854 ; the corresponding estimate for New Zealand was 1,450,090, including Maoris, but excluding inhabitants of the dependent islands, that figure being substantially more than one-fifth. The Australian estimate is presented in a survey of the expansion during a decade, showing a total increase of 1,152,791, or an average of 2.27 per cent, annually. In the same period, the increase in New Zealand has been 302,642, which is equivalent to an average of 2.637 per cent. Thus as both the actual numbers and the ratios show, population has increased much faster in New Zealand in the 1917-27 decade than in Australia. Had the Dominion's rate of increase been identical, the total population in 1927 would have been 42,000 less. The effect of the larger expansion may be illustrated bv the statement that whereas in 1917 there were 225 people for every thousand in Australia, there were 232 in 1927. The comparison cannot, however, bo made without qualification, for the Australian statistics may embody a different treatment of the large movements of men on active service during the war. The New Zealand estimates for 1917 and 1918 show the population actually within the Dominion; that for 1919 was inflated by the return of the expeditionary forces. If the increase from that year to 1927 is examined, it is found that the gain in eight years was 222,900, equivalent to 2.27 per cent, annually, or exactly the same as the Australian rate for the decade. The numerical gain in 1927 was only 20,000; that for 1928 has not yet been announced, but on the returns for nine months, owing to the curtailment of migration, it will be substantially less than even thai abnormally low figure.