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OFFICIAL STATISTICS.
199-
work: »Statistik und Gesellschaftslehre», a work which will probably long remain
an authority in this science. This being the case and the question being of some
importance to Swedes, it may not be inappropriate in a statistical handbook
ef Sweden, briefly to discuss this criticism.
Mr. von Mayr bases his opinion on the defectiveness of the Swedish method
npon the fact that, in keeping continuous registers, increase (by births and
immigration) always proves easier to control than decrease (by deaths and
emigration), and thus a population figure calculated in this manner, will always
prove too high. A confirmation of this theory Mr. von Mayr finds in the present
figures for Sweden relating to the population of advanced ages, figures which he
considers improbable in themselves, and proving that many old persons having
long been dead or having left the country still remain on the registers. That
this is the case, is, according to Mr. von Mayr, proved also by the Swedish
death-rates of advanced ages, which are abnormally low — simply because, as he says,
the population-returns of aged people show too high figures.
It is, however,
evident to every
Swedish specialist on this
nibject that his
criticism must be
untenable. It has not, by
any means, escaped
the attention of the
curators of our
Swedish vital statistics
that decrease is more
difficult than increase
to register exactly,
especially since the
occurrence of
emigration; on the contrary,
a remedy has, during
the last thirty years,
been sought against
this difficulty, by
directions to cancel from
the registers those not
to be found
(disappeared from their
domiciles), a decree
which worked so
effectually that it had to be moderated by means of the new law of 1894. All
Swedish statisticians, too, seem to be agreed that our census reports give rather
somewhat too low a result, and by no means too high a one.
With regard to the present high population figures in the advanced-age groups
in Sweden, the causes of this fact have already been fully shown (pages 111 and
112). That the Swedish figures are not, in themselves, unacceptable, may be
clearly seen from the fact that still higher figures for several of these
advanced-age groups have been shown by Norway, a country, moreover, which carries out
its census in accordance with the method which Mr. von Mayr considers the only
right one. The same remarks hold true respecting Mr. von Mayr’s opinion
that the death-rates given for Sweden in these advanced-age groups are absurdly
low. The mortality in Sweden is, on the whole, nowadays somewhat lower than
in Norway, but the contrary is the case just within the ages in question.
Photo. K. Sidenbladh ]:r.
Office of the Central Bureau of Statistics.
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