Britain: An official handbook > 1977

8
Future Growth
Population
Policy
Birth and Death
Rates
BRITAIN 1977: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
with 54,218,000 in mid-1965, 38-2 million in 1901, and 10-5 million (in Great
Britain) in 1801. The main causes of this great increase in numbers were a
progressive reduction in death rates and a continuance of high birth rates into
the beginning of the twentieth century.
Britain’s population density was approximately 594 persons per square
mile (229 per sq km) in mid-1975, but in England there were approximately
923 persons per square mile (356 Per scl km), and in Greater London 11,664
persons per square mile (4,502 per sq km).
Since 1971 there has been a decline in the rate of population growth. However,
on the basis of mid-1975 population estimates and of present trends in birth
and death rates and migration, the increase in population is expected to con¬
tinue, reaching 56-9 million in 1985, 59 million in 1995, 60-4 million in 2005
and 62-5 million in 2015. This represents an average growth rate of 0-2 per
cent a year over the whole period.
Growing public concern about the effects of an increasing population on an
already densely populated island led to proposals for a policy on population
matters. In 1971 the Government set up a Population Panel following recom¬
mendations made by a House of Commons Select Committee. In its report
the panel endorsed the main recommendations of the select committee
for an official attitude on population and for comprehensive family planning
services as an integral part of the National Health Service. Provisions for
family planning advice and help within the framework of the National Health
Service have gradually been extended so that a free service is now available
to all (see p. 133). In 1974 the Government announced that it proposed to
give higher priority to survey and research work to study fertility, mortality
and migration, in an attempt to discover more about the factors which have
caused the recent decline in the rate of growth of population in the United
Kingdom. The Lord Privy Seal has been given ministerial responsibility for
monitoring and co-ordinating further developments in population matters.
For most of the nineteenth century the annual birth rate was over 30 per
thousand of the population, and the annual death rate was just over 20 per
thousand. Both birth and death rates fell over the last 20 years of the century,
but natural population increase changed little.
These fertile years, with their comparatively high death rates in all age
groups, produced a population of low average age. But when death rates in all
age groups fell by an average of about a third, as they did between 1880 and
1910, the results were a very low general death rate, which helped to maintain
the population increase in spite of a fall in the birth rate, and a gradual increase
in the average age of the population. By the 1930s the birth rate had fallen to
less than half the nineteenth century rate. The population continued to increase
slowly, but its average age rose more rapidly.
Owing to the changing age composition, the general death rate has remained
nearly stationary since 1920 at around 12 per thousand of the population
though death rates have continued to fall heavily in every age group, particu¬
larly among pre-school children, school children and adults in their thirties
and forties, with a consequent lengthening of the expectation of life from about
48 years at birth for a boy born in 1901 and 52 years for a girl, to 69 years at
birth for a boy born in 1972-74 and 75 for a girl.
The continuous fall in the number of births and birth rates ceased in 1933
and for the rest of the 1930s remained at about 15 per 1,000 population. During