SOME ASPECTS OF THE BIOLOGY OF HUMAN POPULATIONS 52 1 



Shintoism. The same thing is not true of any other continent 

 except Asia, and there to a much smaller degree 

 quantitatively. 



In addition to such a birdseye picture of the number of 

 different kinds of people who inhabit the earth as is given in 

 Table i, it is also desirable that the reader have some idea 

 of the age and sex distribution of human populations. To 

 this end Table ii has been prepared. In this table some 29 

 different human populations are arranged in descending 

 order according to the proportion of males aged fifteen to 

 forty-nine to the whole male population. Thus 55.4 per cent 

 of the hving male population of Belgium fall in age some- 

 where between fifteen and forty-nine years inclusive. This 

 is a higher proportion than any other of the populations 

 hsted shows. Therefore Belgium stands at the head of the 

 table. Russia has only 39.6 per cent of its Hving male popula- 

 tion between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine inclusive, 

 and stands at the bottom of the table. 



Table 11 also shows the number of females hving in each of 

 three broad age groups, per 100 males hving at the same ages. 



This table has been computed from data given in a recent 

 paper by Moine. 



Let us consider first the proportion of the sexes. It is 

 apparent from the table that the general rule is that in the 

 first period of fife, up to age fifteen, males are somewhat 

 in excess in the hving population. The only exceptions 

 to this rule among the populations hsted in Table 11 are 

 France, Canada, Greenland and Russia (in Europe). 



In the period of vigorous adolescent and adult hfe, between 

 the ages of fifteen and forty-nine inclusive, the general rule 

 is for females to be a httle in excess of males in the hving 

 population, but there are fairly frequent exceptions. In 

 Table 11 the countries having fewer females than males 

 at these ages are: Samoa, United States, Union of South 

 Africa (both natives and whites), Austrahan Confederation, 

 Canada, British India, Japan and Brazil. These are all 

 populations in which either there is a considerable immigra- 

 tion of young adult males for industrial reasons, or in which 

 the female is under something of a handicap in the general 

 social scheme of things. 



