458 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Colonies generally, and even largely by most of the old 

 countries. For instance, in England the departmental com- 

 mittee appointed to inquire into the financial aspects of the 

 proposals made last session by the Select Committee on Old- 

 age Pensions arrived at the conclusion that, if the pension- 

 age were fixed at sixty-five, the scheme would involve a pro- 

 gressive annual expenditure commencing at £10,300,000, and 

 rising in 1921 to £15,650,000, corresponding to an increase of 

 50 per cent, in the number of old people during the next 

 twenty-one years, an increase out of proportion to any likely 

 increase in the whole population. 



The cause of the phenomenon in England is obvious, de- 

 pending simply on the facts that the old people of to-day are 

 the survivors of those born sixty-five or more years ago, and 

 that the old people of twenty-one years hence will be the 

 survivors of those born forty-four and more years ago, while 

 throughout the century, until quite recent years, there has 

 been a continually increasing annual number of births, com- 

 bined with a marked improvement in respect to chance of 

 life, due largely to advance in medical science, improvements 

 in sanitation, increasing care of the poor, and an all-round 

 improvement in the standard of comfort. It must always be 

 borne in mind that an increase in the number of births, 

 though it affects the population as a whole at once, does not 

 affect the population of old people for sixty-five years, and it 

 then continues to affect that part of the population appre- 

 ciably, though to a diminishing extent, for the next thirty-five 

 years or so. The rapidly increasing annual number of births 

 that took place in England towards the middle of the century, 

 and gave such an impulse to the population that it continued 

 to increase rapidly in spite of the large subsequent emigration, 

 is now producing a similar effect on the aged portion of the 

 population. 



The cause of the phenomenon in New Zealand, or in any 

 new country, is different. Our aged people, for instance, are 

 not to any extent the survivors of persons born in the colony — 

 in fact, at the last census, out of the 20,756 old people of 

 European stock in the colony, only fifty-nine were born in 

 New Zealand ; thus our old-age population may be considered 

 as at present entirely the result of immigration. Now, the 

 great bulk of the immigrants came in the years 1861-65 and 

 1874-79. These immigrants were of all ages, but were mainly 

 of the ages of early manhood, with a fair proportion of 

 children, the obvious consequence being that only a small 

 proportion have had time to reach old age. 



Be it noted that the estimates given for New Zealand are 

 independent of future births. The 115,000 old people of 1961 



