Abstract
DR. E. C. SNOW, in a paper read before the Royal Statistical Society on January 15, discussed “The Limits of Industrial Employment-the Influence of Growth of Population on the Development of Industry”. The first part of the paper dealt in considerable detail with the facts of growth of population in the nineteenth century and up to the outbreak of War. During a considerable part of that period, the population of England and Wales was increasing at the rate of 300,000-350,000 per annum-entirely due to the decline in the death rate. This decline in mortality was not peculiar to industrialised Great Britain, but was equally marked in other agricultural countries. The analysis of the statistical evidence seems to justify the view that the growth of industry in Great Britain was not the direct cause of the increase in population. The population circumstances of England and Wales at the present time are widely different from those ruling up to the time of the War. The population at ages under thirty-five years is declining. At ages over sixty it is still increasing, but the net effect is an annual increase of population of not more than a quarter of that before the War. The economic effect of the smaller rate of population growth now is indicated by the fact that the quantity of foodstuffs imported since 1924 has increased at less than 1 per cent per annum. The overseas countries which rely on this market for an outlet for a large part of their production of foodstuffs are living in the expectation that Great Britain can increase its imports of food at the old rate of 5 per cent per annum, whereas, in fact, it has for some time only been increasing at the rate of 1 per cent per annum, and before long even this small rate of increase is likely to decline.
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Limits of Industrial Employment. Nature 135, 111 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135111c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135111c0