Modern Population Trends and Problems

Abstract

In March 1944, while the second world war was still raging, the Royal Commission on Population was appointed ‘to examine the facts relating to the present population trends in Great Britain; to investigate the causes of these trends and to consider their probable consequences; to consider what measures, if any, should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend of population; and to make recommendations’. This step was of twofold significance. First, it marked the recognition by the Government of the possible need to take policy decisions in the field of population—to translate the subject from the academic to the political plane. Secondly, it marked official recognition of the fact that despite a flood, during the immediate prewar years, of reports of grave foreboding by the demographers of the day (whose anxieties have since proved to have been exaggerated) the Government had insufficient information to decide whether or not there was a 'population problem' in Great Britain. That the problem does not now appear to be so pressing as was once thought does not abate in any way the necessity for observing the facts. The Royal Commission, indeed, emphasized the necessity for continuous study of the population problem which, they said, will always be changing.