ENG-1961 — Page 43

26

REVIEW

half their number is a silent witness to the ghastly irrelevance of warfare.

The privations of the war and the occupation lay heavily on the aged, too, but as anybody who was 70 on VJ Day would have been 86 by census day this effect was imperceptible. No doubt the culling of the feeble and chronically sick from those ages which were neither young nor old had something to do with the average fitness and health of the survivors. It is a healthy population. The death rate is low and getting lower. The birth rate is moderately high and the rate of infantile mortality is remarkably low. These factors point to a steadily rising rate of annual natural increase, and there are several indications that this rate of increase will steepen sharply in four years' time.

It is becoming a settled population. In former censuses the sex ratio, except in the New Territories, showed a large excess of males, because large numbers of men came here from China without their families and returned to their villages in 'Canton more far' when they had saved enough to retire on. This is no longer the case. What does stand out from the district tables, though, is that there is a distinct pattern of internal migration which may well repay further study. Four districts of the New Territories (Sha Tau Kok, Sai Kung North, Cheung Chau and Sai Kung South in that order) have a heavy excess of females caused by temporary migra- tion of young men ‘abroad'-which in their idiom includes Hong Kong and Kowloon-for work. Two districts of the New Territories (Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan) show the opposite characteristic, though the excess of males was reduced in Tsuen Wan at the time of the census by a recent reflux of single-living workers, mostly men, back to Kowloon because of some re-adjustment of working conditions. It appears that a substantial part of the Tsuen Wan labour force consists of men and women who leave their families in Kowloon and find single lodgings in Tsuen Wan. Two districts of the New Territories (San Tin and Tai Po) actually present both features together-many men from these districts have gone 'abroad' but many others have moved in, making the sex ratio almost normal; it is only when division and village figures are examined that the pattern becomes visible.

The densities of population show perhaps for the first time positive evidence that sane town planning is beginning to win the