Census 1961, England and Wales : preliminary report.

  • Great Britain. General Register Office.
Date:
1961
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Census 1961, England and Wales : preliminary report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/88 (page 6)
    ultimately produced by a married couple). It is a fact that this figure moves only slowly with changes in social attitude and it will only be when the marriages most involved in the recent rise in births have been in existence for ten years or so, that it will be possible to make a firm judgment on this score. Whether a permanent rise or not, live births in 1960-61 were 18 per cent above the level of 1951-52, the first year of the period. Deaths have naturally fluctuated with the incidence of influenza and other waves of respiratory infection, but there has been no pronounced trend. With deaths thus generally stable and births rising, the natural increase has risen from an average level of 180 thousands in the first three years of the period to an average of 235 thousands at the end of the period. Another significant event has been the reversal in direction of net migration which since 1954-55 has been increasingly inward. For most of the intercensal period the net migration, whether outward at the beginning or inward later, has been trivial in relation to natural increase, but since 1959 the gain in number from the excess of immigration over emigration has risen and in 1960-61 is estimated to have exceeded the excess of births over deaths. This has not happened since the inward rush of refugees and repatriation immediately prior to World War II. DIAGRAM A. CENSUS POPULATIONS AND INTERCENSAL ESTIMATES. Millions @ Census populations. 1951 1956 1961 Intercensal Population Estimates. — The 1961 Census provides a new bench-mark for annual population estimates in the years that intervene until the next count ils taken. At the same time it serves to indicate the degree of precision of estimates in the immediate past. These. estimates have been plotted in Diagram A which shows that the 1961 Census figure fits consistently into the estimated trend. The normal methods employed by the General Register Office would have produced an estimate at Census Day of 46°051 millions, an accumulated shortfall (according to these provisional figures) over ten years of 21 thousand or one half of one per cent. Having regard to the information available about migration this result must be regarded as satisfactory and as broadly validating the estimation methods. . Density. -— The density of population in England and Wales is 790 persons per square mile of land (and inland water). There is only one other major country in Europe, the Netherlands, which is more crowded with 893 persons per square mile (1958). The figure for Belgium (1958) is 769. Outside,Europe even Mauritius which has been the subject of two recent reports calling petanelen to its population pressure is not so very much more densely populated at 839 to the square mile (1958) though its economic situation is not