Thames Star FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1929. CONJUGAL CONDITIONS.

Thames Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 17570, 8 March 1929, Page 4

Thames Star

FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1929. CONJUGAL CONDITIONS.

“With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right."—Linceln.

The advocates of a tax on bachelors may obtain from the latest statietical returns what may be regarded by them as an argument in favour of their views. The Government Statistician, whose study, of the information that is provided in the census papers furnishes valuable as well as occasionally surprising results, has ascertained that the greater number of men who are married in New Zealand entered into the matrimonial state between the ages of 21 and 40, and that the women married principally between the ages of 18 and 35. He concludes, therefore, that the men and women of these respective ages in the Dominion form what he calls the marriageable portion of the community. From the figures, however, which he has extracted from the mass of detail that is placed at his disposal at a census it would appear that to a large extent this marriageable portion of the community does not incur, or has not incurred, the responsibilities which, in the interests of the State, it should assume. Actually, the Statistician finds that “only' slightly over half of the marriageable part of the community has entered the maritial state.” Of the male population between th e a%e of 21 and 39 inclusive at the most recent census 466 in every 1000, and of the female papulation between the ages of 18 and 35 inclusive as many as 501 in every 1000, had never married. This seems a surprisingly large proportion in each instance, but when the inquiry is extended to persons of 20 years and over in each sex the figures relative to New Zealand are more favourable than those for. Australia, though less favourable than those for England and Wales, Canada and South Africa.