The age distribution of the population of Ireland lends some support to this view.
Natives of India, an element of considerable extent and importance in this colony, are enumerated apart from the white population, but in full detail, recognizing the remarkable difference between the European and the Oriental in the matter of age distribution and civil condition.
The other Scandinavian countries, Norway and Denmark, appear, like Sweden itself in the present day, to bear in their age-distribution distinct marks of the emigration of adults, or, at least, the temporary absence from home of this class at the time of enumeration.
Thus the decline, which by the first method is only 8%, becomes, by the second, 19%; and if the age-distribution of 1905 were reduced to that of the earlier period, the difference would increase to 22%, the most accurate figure of the three.
It is true that for practical use in connexion with vital statistics for a given period, the aggregate age-distribution of the countries concerned would be a more accurate basis of comparison, but the wide period covered by the Swedish observations has the advantage of eliminating temporary disturbances of the balance of ages, and may thus be held to compensate for the comparatively narrow geographical extent of the field to which it relates.
