A Population Enquiry The Population Investigation Committee, of which Professor
Carr-Saunders is the Chairman, has this week published an admirable pamphlet which makes available to the general public the results of an enquiry undertaken last autumn into the present population situation in Great Britain, with special reference to the fall in the birth-rate in the last ten years. Dr. C. P. Blacker and Mr. D. V. Glass, who have written the pamphlet, under the title of "The Future of Our Population," insist on the threat to Western culture and Western ideals which may be expected from a rapid decline in population ; yet even if there had been no fall in fertility after 1933 our population would have began to fall in the near future. The annual excess of births over deaths, 300,000 between 1838 and 1913, in 1934 was Only 120,000, and by about 1940 there is likely to be no excess at all. If present tendencies continue, that will give us not a stationary but a rapidly falling population, of which, more- over, by 1965, about 43 per cent. will be over 6o years of age and only 42 per cent. aged 1-14. The causes of the decline are so many and closely interrelated that they can be analysed only after further enquiry, which the Committee hopes to undertake; greater knowledge is necessary, especially of the interaction of population and economic factors.
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