Abstract
THE Registrar General for England and Wales has recently issued a booklet entitled "Estimates of the Sex and Age Distribution of the Civilian Population in regions and Administrative Areas of England and Wales on 31st December, 1947"(London : H.M. Stationary Office, 2s. 6d.). This publication fills a ftch has been felt by all those who have had to work on local populations. Great changes have taken place in the distribution of the population and its age-composition since the last national census in 1931 ; the National Register of 1939 is also out of date and was taken at a time when evacuation and call-up distorted the picture. The present estimates are based on the maintenance files of local national registration offices, and the figures have been adjusted in the General Register Office. The civilian population only is covered ; conscripts away on national service are therefore excluded, as are members of the mercantile marine. The omission of conscripts, who are away only for relatively short periods, is unfortunate, and it would have been desirable if an estimate of their numbers in different regions and localities could have been given. Figures are available for all local government areas down to district-level, and for the geographical regions of the General Register Office, as well as for the standard regions generally adopted for regional organisation by government departments. There are twelve age-groups for males and fourteen for females. It is to be hoped that a similar publication for Scotland will be issued, so that the whole of Great Britain will be covered. It is satisfactory to see that the much decried system of national registration can yield this valuable statistical by product.
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Population Distribution in England and Wales. Nature 164, 1078 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/1641078a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1641078a0