internally and disregarding the reserve ratio as criterion for several years to come.

For all these risks, precautions, and possible expenses there appears to be no compensation. The existing system in Great Britain is inexpensive, efficiently controlled and, most important of all, gives absolute freedom in the pursuit of an independent price policy.

It may be said, perhaps, that the return to the gold standard will enable London to recover its prestige in international banking and lead to still more flourishing prosperity in the profession. But since banking has always been, in the true sense of the word, a profession, in that it has considered its first duty to be the service of the industrial community at large, there seems little likelihood of purely sectional interests interfering with whatever may be considered the wider interests of society. Moreover, the progressive attitude would seem to be the only salutary course in present times. Great Britain has always set the fashion in banking, and there is every probability of its continuing the rôle, not, it seems, by preserving an obsolescent institution, but rather by sensing and seizing on the spirit of the age. Throughout Europe a violent revulsion has arisen against the chaos of fluctuating currencies. "Stabilise prices" is the text of every economist of note-Gide, Cassel, Bruins, Bonn, Wicksel, Stuart, Ansiaux, Mises. The Genoa Conference states: "The essential requisite for the economic reconstruction of Europe is the achievement by every country of stability in the value of its currency."

It would seem unquestionable that were our country to give the lead by defining clearly the principles on which its currency is in future to be guided, the whole of Europe would endeavour to fall in line. The machinery for this complete accord would be the simplest imaginable. Every country which undertook to stabilise its exchange with sterling would thereby bind itself to the same price policy, and were that policy well conceived, not only would our own country benefit thereby, but every other land which looked to us for guidance.

BIRTHS AND POPULATION IN GREAT BRITAIN

THE fall in the birth-rate of Great Britain since 1876 and the decrease in the actual number of births per annum since 1903 has had, and must continue to have, far-reaching results on the ageconstitution of the population. It is interesting to inquire what birth-rate is necessary to prevent a decrease of the population, and what would be the ultimate age-distribution in a population in which the number of births was constant and the death-rates stationary. To simplify the investigation we will assume that there is no emigration or immigration.

As the starting-point we will take the age-distribution as shown by the Census of 1921, the death-rates as those in England and Wales in 1910-12,1 and the number of births as the average of the three years 1921-23 in Great Britain. Owing to the lack of a Census in Ireland in 1921 the inquiry is confined to Great Britain.

It is obvious that if the death-rates are unchanged a decrease in the number of births must ultimately result in a decreasing population, but the interaction and balance of varying birthand death-rates are by no means easy to perceive a priori, though they are not difficult to compute. The age-distribution of 1921 was the result of a number of variable factors. Persons born before 1876 were the survivors of the period before either the birthor death-rate diminished. Persons aged between 18 and 45 at the Census were originally as numerous year by year as their predecessors, and the death-rate had fallen throughout their lifetime. There were therefore markedly more women at these ages than at previous Censuses, but the men were decimated by the war. All classes over 18 years were depleted by emigration, but the men suffered a greater loss than the women from this cause. The age classes born after 1903 were year by year less numerous, and the births in the war years were abnormally low; the diminution in births was compensated as regards about onethird by reduced infant mortality. The composition of the population in 1921 was therefore abnormal, and its abnormalities result in a small death-rate, for the population under 5 years and 1 Life Table No. 8 for England and Wales.

2 See Table of Births and Deaths below.

over 65 (which contain the age groups whose mortality is high) were small relatively to the population between 5 and 65 (where the mortality is low). Hence we have the phenomenon of a considerable natural increase combined with a diminishing number of births.

Whatever the number of births may be in subsequent years, we already know the starting position of the classes who will be aged 8 or more in 1931, 18 or more in 1941 and so on. No further reduction of infant mortality can affect these groups, and since the death-rate between the ages 5 and 45 never exceeds 15 per 1000 and 11 per 1000 for males and females respectively, there is little room for reduction for these classes except for some saving of deaths from phthisis. In fact the numbers of persons of working ages in 1931 and 1941 could be known with fair

THE POPULATION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

On the hypotheses that the annual number of births is the same as in 1921-23, that death-rates are as in 1910-12, and that there is no migration.

accuracy if the emigration rate could be forecasted. So far as problems of employment are concerned, the figures in the table for 1931 and 1941 give maxima, from which emigrants (already numerous in 1921-23) are to be subtracted. Owing to the reduction in the number of births, the number of boys and girls coming year by year into the labour market has already fallen and will fall further. There will be a special diminution about 1932, when the children born in 1917 and 1918 are of working age, and from 1932 to 1938 the number of recruits will be trifling.1 So far there is little doubt in a forecast of the maximum population, and we can also anticipate decade by decade a reduction in the age groups reached by the children born in the period 1903-1923. In the Table, for example, this is shown in the reduction in the numbers of women aged 20 to 45 in 1941 and 1951.

The lower part of the Table shows the rate of progress on our hypothesis towards the distribution which would result from a stationary number of births. The proportion of children under 15 falls rapidly to 1931 and then slowly to 1971, at which date the final distribution so far as broad categories are concerned is approximately reached. The excess of women over men, due to the war losses and to emigration, is gradually reduced. The main part of the Table shows that whereas women of 15 to 65 were 12 per cent. more numerous than men in the same age group in 1921, in a stationary population the excess would be only 1 per cent. The total of men and women aged 15 to 65 is from 66 to 68 per cent. of the population throughout. The evident movement is the replacement of the young by the old. The active members of the population will be supporting the survivors of a former generation in place of a rising generation.

The growth of the total population of Great Britain was 10 per cent. from 1901 to 1911, and 4.7 per cent. from 1911 to 1921. If there was no emigration the growth would be 6 per cent. from 1921 to 1931, about 4 per cent. from 1931 to 1941, a little over 2 per cent. to 1951, and thereafter there would be a very slight increase to a maximum circa 1971, followed by a trifling fallalways, of course, on the hypothesis of constancy in number of births and unchanged death-rates.

The preceding estimates and conclusions depend to some extent on what is the number of births taken as constant. The following statements are independent of this number, but still

1 This point is examined more closely in a forthcoming book by the authors of The Third Winter of Unemployment, where more detailed tables are given for 1931 and 1941.

depend on the continuation of the 1910-12 death-rates. The stationary population is 53-4 times the number of births. The death-rate, which equals the birth-rate, is 18.7 per 1000. If we take, as we reasonably may, women between 20 and 45 years as the number of potential mothers, a number which is much more important in relation to births than any other, we find the birth-rate per 1000 of them to be 106, which is equivalent to about 2.6 births per woman in her lifetime, and of course to a larger number if the sterile are excluded. This rate is necessary to continue the stationary population, and with a lower rate the population will diminish.

Returning now to the actual figures, the birth-rate per 1000 women aged 20 to 45 was in 1911, 122, in 1921, 115, in 1922 about 105, in 1923 only about 101. In 1931, when the number of women of these ages will be greater (since they were born when the number of births was still high), a rate of only 99 would be required, and in 1941 only 100, but by this date the number of women at the earlier and more fertile ages would already be at the minimum. We may therefore expect some increase in the number of births in the next few years, unless whatever causes are responsible for the low rates of 1922 and 1923 continue to be effective.

In this connection the experience of France is relevant and interesting.

With a very slow increase in population France had reached a nearly stationary condition very similar to that obtained in our