POPULATION STATISTICS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22084, 14 October 1933, Page 10

POPULATION STATISTICS

The annual reports of Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of Health in England, are always full of interest. This year it includes the cheering announcement that the British death rate from tuberculosis has fallen from 92 per 1000 to 69. This result is due to better living in the double sense of increased sobriety and better food and housing. The mortality rates for England and Wales, despite the prevalence of unemployment, also show a decline, and now stand at 12 per 1000. Good as this is, New Zealand shows more favourable figures with a mortality of 8.5 —the lowest mortality rate in the world, that of Australia, which is 9.1, coming next. The people in this southern British world, whatever they may have lost in other ways, have clearly not suffered physically. They have generally had the advantage of abundance of food, plenty of air-space, and on the whole good housing. The old depressing conditions of Britain have practically gone; the population as a whole is better nourished than at any previous period of history. The immense scale of the social'and medical machinery can be gauged from the fact that last year 62 million school meals were provided. This is certainly a remarkable aspect of social life amid much that is depressing. A healthy nation has the first requisite for happiness and success. What has been achieved is a triumph for education in hygiene and sanitation, as well as in the general measures for prevention of deadly epidemics. It is gratifying to know that infant mortality is declining in the Old Country as in New Zealand. This, which is the direct result of medical and social measures, implies also that the life of the mother is happier. Indeed, on the whole the woman’s criticism, “ This is a man’s world,” is losing its point. More males are bom certainly than females; in New Zealand there are about 103 boys to 100 girls, the ratio being much the same as in England. But women endure the strain of modem life better than men. In Britain at the age 'of 80 there are two women! alive for every man. Matrimonially considered, however, this is a drawback, for the more women there are, the smaller must be the chance of each for wedded life. Last year in New Zealand there were nearly 30 thousand more males than females, but by the time adulthood was reached the excess of males was only about 17 thousand. Perhaps, on the whole, women would rather live longer and be single than die earlier and be married, though there not appear to be any conclusive evidence of long life in the case of single people. Women appear to be less exposed to the risk of mental derangement than men. At the end of 1931 there were 645 more males than females in our mental hospitals, out of a total of 6661, and in the total number of people requiring some oversight—7s4s in all —the preponderance of men was relatively greater still. The question of sex is baffling. Biologists seem agreed that far more boys are conceived than girls, and that far more die before birth. So far there is no scientific knowledge that can determine sex, nor does there appear to be any need for such knowledge in human beings. Nature giveß a somewhat fair division. If by any freak Nature began to bring forth twice as many women as men Mormonism would have an obvious statistical justification, and bigamy would be readily condoned. As a rule the deathrate is heaviest amongst unenlightened peoples. One has only to contrast the figures for India to see what physical blessings the enlightened white nations have begun to enjoy. The mortality amongst infants in India is 250 per 1000, despite the great advances recently made there under British expert guidance. The millions of syphilitic and tubercular sufferers in that country are as appalling as the helplessness of a large proportion of the vast and growing population of 355 million. Imagination staggers at the prospect of what the Orient will be in another century if the birth-rate continues and means of combating disease, flood, and famine are universally applied. No doubt the spread of Western ideas — to use an easy euphemism —will ensure in the near future a family of two who will both live rather than a family of eight of whom two at least will die in the first year. The patriarch of the Indians, whoever he was, might with more numerical justice than father Abraham have had vouchsafed to him the vision of a posterity outnumbering the sands of the sea-shore. Some day a eugenic Gandhi will arise in India and lead his people to literacy and a diminished offspring. The East has been very prolific. A new era is due, that of a higher standard of living and regard not so much for quantity as for quality of population.