built-up areas occupying less than 16 per cent of the total land area (some 75 per cent being marginal land
and the remainder being used for farming), the population density in the metropolitan areas is at present
higher than 25,400 per square kilometre, placing urban Hong Kong among the most densely populated
places of the world. The education system, no less than the social services generally, is under continuous
pressure from the weight of the people it serves (and more significantly, from those whom it cannot yet
serve as fully as might be wished) : the population, moreover, is still a young one, about 37 per cent being
below age 20 and 25.3 per cent under age 15.
1.5 The rate of natural population increase, however, has been dropping steadily over a ten-year
period, from 14.9 per thousand in 1970 to 12.0 in 1980 (a result of the birth rate declining from 20.0 to
16.9 per thousand during this period and the death rate remaining stable at about 5 per thousand).
Moreover, the age structure of the population has changed considerably over the past ten years, with a
markedly lower proportion now under 15 years, a growing proportion of working-age population and a
declining dependency ratio. A redistribution of the population is also being effected with the development of
six new towns in the New Territories, designed to alleviate the high densities of existing urban areas and to
provide better housing and general living conditions. These demographic changes, though mostly welcome
in the long term, have created awkward short-term problems of supply and demand in education -
particularly overprovision of resources in areas of declining population and underprovision in developing
areas. The problems have not proved insuperable but their solutions have tended to determine the direction
and pace of some educational developments in w