84 Transactions. — Miscellanecus. 



returns of age than in the preceding census. It would have 

 been of interest to have considered some earlier censuses and 

 found what the tendency was in this matter in earlier times, 

 but the census returns prior to 1896 do not give the popula- 

 tion for each year of age, and it is impossible to pursue the 

 question. 



As to what the reasons are — and such must exist — for this 

 very substantial and satisfactory progress we cannot suggest 

 anything with confidence. Countries differ very much in the 

 matter we have been discussing, and on the whole the better 

 the education of the people the more truthful are their returns 

 of age. In India, on the one hand, the returns reach the 

 height of the ridiculous; in 1890, for instance, out of 100,000 

 persons of all ages, the number returned as of 39 years was 

 322, and of 41 years was 216, while the number returned as 

 of 40 years was no less than 5,240 ! In Germany, on the 

 other hand, the results are far better than our ow^n. One 

 can hardly claim, however, that the education of the people 

 of New Zealand has improved in five years to such an ex- 

 tent as would be necessary to explain the phenomenon. If 

 the improvement I have pointed out were confined to or 

 more conspicuous in the older ages, the influence of the old- 

 age pension scheme, that has made many an old person 

 better acquainted with his age, and would be likely to 

 make him more precise in recording it, might be put forward 

 as a main cause, but the improvement is about equally con- 

 spicuous on the whole throughout the period from 30 to 80 

 years of age. Of course, a higher moral sense in the people 

 would suffice to explain everything ; let us hope this is the 

 true cause. 



I have calculated tables for the sexes taken separately 

 similar to those discussed above, but which I do not propose 

 to publish. They reveal the fact that there is, on the whole, 

 nothing much to choose between the sexes in the matter of 

 inaccurate returns of age, m spite of the fact that the chief 

 blame for this offence is popularly given to females. If 

 females are more strongly tempted from motives of vanity to 

 make inaccurate returns, it may be that a finer moral sense 

 prevents them yielding to the temptation to any greater 

 extent than the males. But, however the causes of such 

 inaccuracies may differ in kind or in degree in the two sexes, 

 the results in tlie main are the same. A greater preference in 

 the males than in tlie females for the ages 35 and 45, and a 

 greater preference in the females than in the males for the 

 ages of 50, 60, and 70, are apparently the only decided 

 differences that the tables reveal. 



