WORLD POPULATION

Taranaki Daily News, 31 March 1934, Page 18 (Supplement)

WORLD POPULATION

DECLINING BIRTH-RATE. NEWSPAPER’S COMMENTS. London, March 14. A prophecy that in eight years the population of Britain will commence to decline owing to the low and decreasing birth-rate, is made by the Daily Mail. For the fifth successive year, England and Wales have recorded the lowest birth rate in their history. There were 580,851 live births and 496,550 deaths in 1933, meaning an increase in the population of 84,300. The annual birth rate was 12.8 and the death rate 12 per 1000. The Mail, in a leading article, prophesies the early cessation of the present slight increase. It says experts calculate that France’s population will begin to fall in 1937, Britain’s in 1942, Germany’s in 1946, and that of the United States in 1960. Even China is approaching stagnancy, and the large Japanese increase cannot long continue. Competition might be less fierce, adds the Mail, but the demand for commodities would be lessened, entailing drastic world-wide readjustment.