44
1921 bringing numbers of usually absent men back to the village for the festival, and the remaining 1920 refugees.
Table 17
Married Males.
Ratio of Married Men to Married Women
N. District 1911 Excess of Males 14428 + Married females 17433 + N. District 1921 Married males 14891 Married females 16124 3005 (17.2%) S. District 1911 Males 6231 Females Excess of (Land) Married males* 1233 (7.6%) Males : Married females* 3985 : Females 2246 (36.0%) S. District 1921 Married males 6429 Married females 5490 939 (14.6%) J S. District 1921 (Boat): Married males** 1817 Males Married females** 1411 406 (22.3%) Females * Includes New KowloonFertility was low. We have seen that the likely adjusted annual figure for births was about 2,500 a year in Northern District. The figures for married men and women in the two censuses, when adjusted for widow(er)s and absent spouses, suggests that there were about 10,000-10,750 couples living together as man-and-wife in that district, with the wife of child-bearing age (below 45). This suggests only one live birth for each such couple every 4-4.3 years. With live births at these rates, a family where both husband and wife survived from marriage at about 20 to the wife reaching 45 would have had 5-6 children. However, many couples must have had their married lives cut by the death of one of the spouses, and it is, perhaps, more likely that the average number of children per family was closer to 4-5. Given that less than half of children born lived to marry, it would seem that the population was basically static, or growing only slowly. Comparing the basic 1911 and 1921 figures for Northern District (subtracting the Tsuen Wan figures from the 1911 statistics, and the Floating population figures from the 1921 statistics) suggests that the resulting 1911 population was 32,747 males and 33,393 females, against 32,139 males and 32,056 females in 1921, a slight drop over the decade. While these