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VITAL STATISTICS
Population
the total home population of the County in the middle of 1955 according to the
Registrar-General was 3,295,000 compared with 3,322,000 in mid 1954—a decline of
27,000.
Corresponding estimates for metropolitan boroughs are shown in Table 3 on page
181 and the rates given in this annual report are calculated on these figures.
Table 1 (page 179) shows the age distribution of the population as at the date of the
respective censuses for 1901, 1911 and 1921, and the mid-year population as estimated
by the Registrar-General for 1931 and for each year from 1938 onwards.
The net fall in the population from the middle of 1954 is made up of a loss of 30,000
in ages under 45 (19,000 between ages 25 to 44) slightly offset by a gain of 3,000 in
the older age groups. As the birth rate has fallen from 15.8 in 1950 to 15.1 in 1955 the
child population in the age range 0-4 years should decline because the numbers coming
into the age group are fewer than the ones leaving it—the actual fall of4,000 is, however,
greater than would have been expected on a purely arithmetical basis. Conversely, on
a similar basis the child population in the age group 5-14 years should have risen with
more school entrants than school leavers because of the birth rate of 15.8 in 1950 compared
with 14.2 in 1940—in fact the population of this group also fell by 4,000.
Although assumptions based on birth rates alone are not wholly valid because of
changes in the total population over the years, the features set out above combined
with the fall of 19,000 between ages 25 and 44 (the age of parenthood) can only be
explained by net migration out of the county. Some 7,000 of the migrants were
rehoused on the Council's own out-county estates and about another 3,000 are known
to have gone to new and expanded towns—the greater part of the movement (17,000
approximately) was thus due to individual effort.
To some extent this movement of young families results in an 'unbalanced'
population. If each succeeding generation were reproducing itself a diagram of the age
structure of a population would be pyramidal in shape, with the child population
largest at the base and, because of successive losses by death, a gradation to the apex of
old people: if the average family is large the base of the pyramid will be broad. This
question of the reproduction rate, and hence population structure, is a complex of
mortality, age and rate of marriage and fertility, of which the latter is perhaps the most
important. Changes in the reproduction rate in Great Britain (and elsewhere) over
the past two or three generations have affected the age structure of the population
and have given rise to enquiry, e.g., the Royal Commission on Population.
In the diagram of age structure on page 9. London's population is seen to be even
more 'out of balance' than is the population of England and Wales, also shown in
the same diagram. The age groups used for the diagram are determined by the figures
available from the Registrar-General who gives the population estimates in this form.
The London proportions aged 85 years and over, which are not quoted officially, are
estimated on the assumption that age distribution at this extreme end of the age range
is approximately the same in London as elsewhere in the country.
For both London and England and Wales there will be noted a preponderance of
women in the older age groups—much of that for the 55-64, and to a lesser extent,
that of the 65-74 age groups is due to the higher mortality among men in the first
world war—above these ages it is merely a reflection of the greater toughness of
womankind. 1,755,000 of London's total population of 3,295,000 are women, an
excess of 215,000 (6.5 per cent.) of which nearly half (101,000) comprises women aged
65 or more; corresponding figures for England and Wales are 23,052,000 women out
of a total population of 44,441,000, an excess of 1,663,000 (3-7 per cent.) of which
nearly two thirds (1,042,000) comprises women aged 65 or more. At the other end of
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