MORE WOMEN THAN MEN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20425, 2 October 1934, Page 10

MORE WOMEN THAN MEN.

A close studv of the Registrar-Gen-eral's returns for the first quarter of the year rather tends to show that there is very slight likelihood of the preponderance of women in England being diminished. It is true that more boys than girls were born in this quarter—a usual occurrence—there being 76,840 male babies against 72,663 girls, but the greater mortality among the boys seems to continue. At the same time, there was a welcome sign of diminution in the infant mortality rate. In this quarter it amounted to 78 per 1000 of registered live births, which was 33 per 1000 of the ten preceding first quarters. All insurance tables tend to show that women have a greater* expectation of life than men, and this can only mean that the excess of women over men will continue, however slowly, to grow. Emigration among men. until the war, was largelv responsible for this disparity, but this has fallen off enormously, and it now appears that the preponderance of women can only be ascribed to the “ survival of the fittest.” At one time there was always the explanation that women had the quieter existence, with a comparative absence of strain and a far less risk of accident, but it is doubtful whether this theorv would hold good under modern conditions. One is inclined to believe that it is women who, after all, are the “ stronger sex.”