The Still Falling Birth Rate The Registrar-General's returns for 1933,
published this week, show that the birth-rate has fallen to the lowest level recorded in this country, except for the last year of the War. The figure, 14.4 per thousand, is only slightly higher than in Austria and Sweden, and lower than all other known figures. The rate of increase of the popula- tion was only 2.1 per thousand for the year. This means that the decline in the increase, which was known to all those who studied population statistics, has become more rapid than was expected. The effect will be to accentuate the difficulties anticipated as a result of the dispropor- tionate number of old people. Unless there is in the future a sharply rising birth-rate, the youth of the decades after next will be burdened with a pensionable age-group out of proportion to the normal capacity of the State to maintain. Quite apart from that the returns raise forcibly the question of our capacity to populate the Empire if ever the stream of emigration is set flowing again.
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