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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 8, No. 9. July 11, 1945

Prospects

Prospects

The approaching results of these trends are obvious. The proportion of persons in the age groups of maximum social productivity, the proportion of those who man the factories, till the fields, produce the goods and further the technology whereby we control nature, is rapidly decreasing, while those whose days of labour are past, who have a claim to be supported by the community, are enormously increased. In ten to thirty years the population will actually start to decline. Before long every young worker will be carrying two or three old age pensioners on his back. What then of the future for which our men have fought? This is not an academic problem—it must be faced by the generation now at VUC.

To ensure the maintenance of the population an average family of three to four children is necessary. But 65% of present marriages produce less than two children. The following figures show how the position has deteriorated in the past sixteen years. From 1926 to 1942 the number of children under fifteen declined by 15,000. During the same period the number of persons over sixty increased by 90,000, and of persons fifty to fifty-nine, by 58,000. On the one hand a declining birthrate, on the other an ageing population.