34
POPULATION
immediately pre-war level of 1,600,000 had been regained. An assessment of the population in September 1949 by the then Department of Statistics put the total at 1,857,000.
Estimates for subsequent years have been based mainly on the birth and death registration figures and on the arrival and depar- ture figures modified, where necessary, by any other information available at the time. The calculation is complicated by a signi- ficant quantity of unrecorded immigration, particularly since the number passing both ways across the frontier in any one year can be equal to or greater than the total of the population. But as the series of calculations made from 1949 to 1960 (ignoring this factor) fall short of the census figures by only about 120,000, it seems that the error from this source is not on the average very large, though it may in some years reach or exceed 30,000.
Since the estimate of population at the end of 1961 was based on the census, while that for 1960 was based on different data, the population increase for the year cannot be obtained by a direct comparison of the two figures. The true increase is calculated to have been 98,200 of which 89,988 came from the excess of registered births over registered deaths. The actual number of registered births was 108,726 in 1961 compared with 110,667 in 1960 and of registered deaths 18,738 compared with 19,146. On the mid-year population of 3,177,700 of whom 623,200 were females between the ages of 15 and 44, these figures yield a crude birth rate of 34.22 per mille, a general fertility rate of 0.1745 and a crude death rate of 5.90 per mille.
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URBAN POPULATION
The total number (except transients) claiming to originate from Commonwealth countries outside Hong Kong was 33,140 of whom 27,936 resided in the urban area. Those from non-Commonwealth countries, other than China, totalled 16,607 of whom 13,467 resided in the urban area. These are census figures for census day. The census questions did not include nationality, but the figures pro- vided by the Aliens Registration Office for non-Chinese alien residents at the end of the year totalled 2,102 of whom the largest groups were American (760), Japanese (385), Portuguese (156), Filipino (144), Indonesian (88), German (86), Dutch (78), French (74) and Thai (74).