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VITAL STATISTICS
Population
The total home population of the County in the middle of 1956 according to the
Registrar-General's estimate was 3,273,000 compared with 3,295,000 in mid-1955—a
decline of 22,000.
Corresponding estimates for metropolitan boroughs are shown in Table 3 on
page 231 and the rates given in this report are calculated on those figures.
Table 1 (page 229) 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 of 22,000 in the population from the previous year's figure is accounted
for almost entirely by changes in the age groups under forty-five years; the population
at middle-age (45-64 years) remains the same and the group aged 65 years and over
shows a fall of 1,000. Under age 45 the population changes are a fall of 1,000 in
children aged 0-4 years, a rise of 6,000 in children of school age, a fall of 7,000
in young adults (15-24 years) and a fall of 19,000 in the age group 25-44 years. So
far as the children are concerned, assuming wastage from death and migration to be of
the same order as in previous years, the alterations are of the magnitude to be expected
and are a reflection of changes in the birth rate in appropriate years: the birth rate in
1951 was higher than it is now (and than it was fifteen years earlier)—hence the rise in
the population aged 5-14 as a larger quota moves in and the fall in the 0-4 population
as it moves out. As regards the adults, although the contrast between the high birth
rates preceding the first world war and the low ones of the nineteen-thirties doubtless
plays some part in net alterations of the population, the migration factor plays a more
important part. The fact that the changing numbers in the different age groups are
net changes and conceal a large amount of inward and outward migration cannot be
too strongly stressed.
In my last annual report reference was made to the differences in the age structure
of London's population compared with that for England and Wales—the population
changes above, which are slight in relation to the total numbers involved, make no
appreciable change in the picture then presented.
Fertility
The total births allocated to London for 1956 were :
Live 52,171
Still 1,070
Total 53,241
Live births
The live birth-rate in 1956 was 15.9 per 1,000 population as compared with 15.1 in
1955. The number of live births registered as occurring in London was 59,560, an
excess of some 7,400 over those attributable to mothers residing within the County;
the corresponding excess in 1955 was 7,500. 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
the proportion of women of child-bearing age in the population is greater in London
than in England and Wales; adjusting for this difference by multiplying the crude
rate by the Registrar-General's areal comparability factor for London births (0.88) the
rate becomes 14.0. This factor makes no allowance however for the differing numerical
proportions of married women in London compared with England and Wales—at the
1951 census the proportion of London women married at these ages was 95 per cent.
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