Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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4° REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
compare these figures with the figures for India as a whole given at page 275 of
Mr. Baines' General Report for 1891, we find very striking differences. What in
Burma is merely a marked preference for certain ages might in India generally
almost be called a craze. The following few examples will show how relatively small
the popularity of the multiples of five and ten adverted to above is in Burma.
The figures are for every 1 00,000 males :
Age. India, 1891. Burma, 1891. Burma, 1901.
*9 m 835 996
30 5.850 3.958 3.578
31 301 879 930
39 322 . 661 639
40 5.240 2,665 ?MS
41 216 667 577
64 72 273 239
65 493 484 748
66 59 205 247
Whereas in Burma the favoured figures, 30, 40 and 65, are never returned
as much as five times as frequently as the figures in their close neighbourhood,
in India as a whole 30 is given more than twelve times as often as 29 and
very nearly twenty times as often as 31, while 40 is more than sixteen times as
popular as 39 and almost twenty-five times; as popular as 41'. It is much the
same with other ages. To dwell on another point, it may be noted that, to all
intents and purposes, 18, 28, 38 and 48 have been returned no more frequently in
Burma than the ages in their immediate vicinity ( 27, 29, 37, 39, &C;) : there is
hardly any. of that fondness for numbers ending with eight, which is another
feature of the Imperial figures. The predilection for eight is due, in India no
doubt, to the habit of counting by fours; possibly also to the influence of colloquial
expressions. I cannot find that such colloquial expressions as exist in Burma,, such
as, for instance, " four, five, eight " (ccoscls^S) or 33808 " a quarter, " {i.e., of one
hundred, or 25) have left any recognizable impression on the ages returned at the
enumeration. On the whole it seems to me that there is ample justification for
the belief that Burmans generally have a far better idea of their ages and are far
more likely to give them correctly to a census enumerator than the majority of
the inhabitants of the rest of British India.
69. It would, of course, however, be futile to assume that even the Burma
age-returns were an approximation to what by rights
Adjustment of incorrect figures .f~ , , • , 1 - .
t> 1 r 11 r
returned. they should have been, lobe or any real value for
statistical purposes the figures require to be adjusted
or " smoothed," and this delicate process can be efficiently carried out only by an
actuarial expert. The services of Mr. Hardy have been secured by the Government
of India for the purpose of analysing and adjusting the age-returns of the
census and of preparing from these data life-tables, tables of age distribution and
birth and death-rates for the various provinces, and he has been supplied with the
required figures from Burma. It would, as the Census Commissioner has recently
pointed out, " be useless to attempt to anticipate the results of Mr. Hardy's
researches by preparing life-tables which would Carry no weight " andj in view
of what is being done in this regard outside the purely Census offices, I do riot'
propose to attempt even the approximate adjustment of ages which has been
suggested by. Mr. Risley to Provincial Superintendents.
70. The mean age of the two typical sets of 100,000 of each sex whose un-
Ti.. ni. w adjusted ages are given in Subsidiary Table No.
J
IVA
The mean age of the population. .
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is 25* 10 years for males and 25*28 years for
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females.
This is slightly higher than the mean age for thei Whole province obtained in 1891
(24*57 years for males and 24*51 years for females). The figures, based as they
arfe on unsmoothed data, can at best only be looked upon as approximate, but,
viewed in the light of the returns for India and Burma at the last Census", they
may safely be regarded as near enough to the actual facts for the purposes of a
general comparison. The slightly higher mean f6r females than for males is not.
what would be expected in a community where -the stronger sex is more largely