Twenty-three non-Chinese infants under one year of age died in 1938, as compared with thirty in 1937. This gives an infant mortality rate of forty-two for non-Chinese infants, as compared with a rate of forty-six for the year 1937. Comment on the respective infant mortality rates of the Chinese and non-Chinese communities is superfluous.
There was a considerable increase in the number of marriages in the year under review; both in licensed places of worship and at the Registry of Marriages. This can be accounted for principally by the influx of population, but also by the fact that the Christian marriage and its civil equivalent are gaining in popularity among the Chinese. It is of course impossible to record the number of non-Christian customary marriages.
The following table provides means for comparing statistics in 1938 with those in 1937:
1937 1938 Chinese Others Chinese Others By Special Licence in Church 2 1 By Special Licence at Registry 6 5 10 9 By Registrar's Certificate in Church 93 128 116 115 By Registrar's Certificate at Registry 134 50 209 79 In Articulo Mortis 1 1 1 1 236 185 336 208# Chapter IV
## PUBLIC HEALTH
The extension of the Sino-Japanese hostilities to South China during 1938 resulted in a still greater influx of refugees into Hong Kong than had taken place in the previous year, and in an aggravation of the various public health problems such as overcrowding, malnutrition and epidemic disease.
The population for mid-year 1938 based upon the arithmetical increase between the census of 1921 and that of 1931 is calculated as 1,028,619.
The Community was faced with having to provide shelter for nearly half a million refugees.
The actual surplus of immigrants over emigrants by sea and rail in 1938 amounted to over 300,000 persons; this figure does not take cognisance of the surplus of the previous year, nor does it include the large numbers of refugees who entered the Colony across the land frontiers and by sampan, junk, ferry and launch.
Many checks have been made of the numbers of residents per floor in the usual type of three-story Chinese tenement. The normal figure before the commencement of the Sino-Japanese hostilities was fifteen to twenty. It is now sixty. This fact goes to support the apparently high estimate of increase in the population given above.