DOMINION BIRTHRATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23437, 28 February 1938, Page 17

DOMINION BIRTHRATE

DECLINE DISCUSSED “ STANDING UP TO DRINK BEER * (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Feb. 2. New Zealand’s declining birth rate was one of the topics discussed by Dr G. F. McCleary at a meeting of the Eugenics Society, at Burlington House, London. Dr McCleary has a personal acquaintance with New Zealand and- the other dominions, and New Zealand figured largely in the lecture and the subsequent animated discussion. The lecturer began by saying that decline of fertility might be thought natural in crowded countries, but in the new countries of the Commonwealth, where there was no over-crowding, decline in fertility was equally marked. In Australia and New Zealand, where the people were so British that even in their warm climates they stood up to drink their beer at the bar counter instead of adopting the out-door cafe of the Continent, the birth rate had declined rapidly since 1888. The Australian birth rate reached a record low level of 16.39 in 1934, and was 17.1 in 1937. In New Zealand the rate fell from over 40 in 1875-79 to 25 in 1899, rose to 27.5 in 1908, was 16.2 in 1935, and 16.6 in 1936. In both countries the recent rate was insufficient for the maintenance of the population. In Australia there was no problem of depressed racial fertility, as the Aboriginals, 60,000 in number, seemed to be dying out. In New Zealand, however, the gifted Maori people were endowed with high vitality, and they had been in the main treated with a consideration which was unfortunately rare. They had produced citizens of* whom New Zealanders as a whole were proud. It was not until 1913 that Maori births were first registered. In the five years to 1936 the Maori birth • rate was 41.6 and -death rate 18, while the European rates were 16.6 and 8.3 respectively. Thus there was an of births in the case of the Maoris of 23.6, compared with only 8.3 for Europeans. The mean expectation of European life in New Zealand was already 68 years, so that there was little prospect of further checking the tendency of the excess of European births ove> deaths to diminish. The difference ir ■fertility of the two races was so grea that it seemed possible that at some future time what the Maoris had losowing to inferior armament they mighregain by superior fertility. It would be seen that the dominion; to-day presented population problem) of high scientific interest, “I am un able to regard the facts as mere in teresting research material,” the lec turer concluded. “I see in them ai element of Greek tragedy, a mysteriou: force moving our race to an unknowi but tragic destiny.” Dr McCleary. who was a pioneer ii the maternity and child welfare movement in England, has recently published a book entitled “ The Menace o! British Depopulation,” which should be of wide interest in the Dominion.