Note 7 — Chapter III · POPULATION AND BIRTH RATE

Further investigation appears to indicate that the official statistics concerning emigration and immigration are very unreliable. The Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom for 1912 gives the total emigration in the ten years 1901–10 as 4,724,233, and the total immigration 2,409,490, leaving an outward balance of 2,314,723. In the same period there were 11,628,493 births and 6,780,266 deaths, giving a natural increase of 4,848,227; and since the actual increase by the census returns was 3,757,944, the net loss by emigration could only have been 1,091,283 or less than half of the officially recorded number. Thus it appears that little over one-fifth of our natural increase is lost by emigration. (Since writing this, I find the Registrar-General admits the returns prior to 1908 were defective.)