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provincial who, like the native Londoner (judging from the lower proportion of married
persons in London at ages 25—44 years), devotes his early adult years to furthering his
career and not until he becomes well-established does he turn to matrimony. The
deficiency among young men aged 15-24 is not fully explainable but may be partly
attributable to the fact that young Londoners do not follow those employments such as
mining and agriculture which qualify for exemption from National Service.
To sum up, the main characteristics of London's resident population are a deficiency
of young people, even greater than in the country as a whole, proportionately more
men and women between ages 25 to 44 years and after age 45 proportionately fewer
men and more women than in the population of England and Wales.
The County of London being the core of a conurbation receives a large daily influx
of workers from residential areas outside its boundaries. The Registrar-General's
recently published Report on Usual Residence and Workplace (one of the census
volumes) shows that 972,000 persons come into the county every day to work, mainly
to the central boroughs, and there is a movement in the opposite direction of 149,000,
thus London's day-time population is 823,000 more, or 25 per cent. greater, than the
number of residents.

Live births
The live birth-rate in 1955 was 15.1 per 1,000 total population as compared with
15-3 in 1954. (The figure actually published for 1954 was 15.2 but it has since been
adjusted in the light of a later allocation of births from the Registrar-General.) The
number of hve births registered as occurring in London was 57,312, an excess of some
7,500 over those attributable to mothers residing within the County; the corresponding
excess in 1954 was 7,700. The birth-rate in London tends to follow the same trend as for
the country as a whole—indeed, since 1947 the crude rates have been practically
identical. The two rates are not however strictly comparable because as was demonstrated
in the population diagram, the proportion of women of child-bearing age in
the population is greater in London than in England and Wales.
Since 1949 the Registrar-General has provided a factor for the adjustment of local
birth rates to permit of comparability between different areas and with the national
rate. This areal comparability factor is based on the ratio of the proportion of the
number of women aged 18-44 years in the local population to the national proportion
and hence allows for the varying proportion of women of child bearing age but not
for any other factor. For London this factor, which was 0.91 in 1949, has been 0.87 for
the past three years and the crude birth rate multiplied thereby becomes 13.1 instead of
15.1 per 1,000 population as compared with the national figure of 15.0. This adjusted
figure does not take into account, however, the differing proportions of married women
in the two populations under consideration—the proportion of women married aged
15 to 44 in London was only 95 per cent. of the corresponding proportion for England
and Wales at the census in 1951. Assuming no radical change in the pattern of marriage
the 13 per cent, difference between the adjusted birth rate for London and the national
figure can be accounted for as to 5 per cent, by the proportionately fewer married women
in London and as to 8 per cent, by a real difference in the fertility of London marriages.
The crude birth rate for the past 21 years is shown in the diagram (page 11) together
with the national rate and, since 1949, the adjusted birth rate: the true comparative
fertility of London lies somewhere between the lines for the crude rate and the adjusted
rate.
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