Shannon Roberts is co-editor of MercatorNet's blog on population issues, Demography is Destiny. While she has a background as a barrister, writing has been a life-long passion and she has contributed to a range of publications. She has regularly written on demographic issues for almost a decade, and her writing informs both academic teaching and international debate. Shannon balances her writing with her other passion - her family. She has three beautiful children and lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Concern about chronically low fertility is increasing.
Date posted: 2021-01-30
In 2020 it could no longer rely on migration to prop up its declining population.
Date posted: 2021-01-30
2021 will be brighter if we encourage more babies.
Date posted: 2021-01-15
The world stage is changing fast, and Nigerian youth make up an ever-growing proportion of the world's population. In fact, led by Nigeria, by 2100 Sub-Saharan Africa will be the only region in the world still growing
Date posted: 2021-01-15
There is no doubt that Covid-19 measures will increase poverty.
Date posted: 2020-11-27
75% of Australia's deaths from Covid-19 have occurred in residential aged care facilities.
Date posted: 2020-11-01
Many countries rely on migrant workers to sustain their workforces, in part due to falling fertility across the globe. Migrant workers often rely on their incomes to support families back home. However, for now at least, Covid 19 has significantly affected migration and migrant jobs.
Date posted: 2020-10-17
Given there is already huge unmet need for formal care in this country, it is staggering to think about the sky-high level of demand that will be placed on our care system and unpaid carers in the next 25 years if urgent action isn't taken by the Government.
Date posted: 2020-09-17
New data released by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) last Thursday analyses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Date posted: 2020-09-16
Increasingly, greater numbers of researchers are acknowledging the grave problems associated with a society that delays having children and seemingly celebrates career milestones over marriage and parenthood.
Date posted: 2020-08-29
It seems that, before we solve the opioid crisis that is killing and affecting the lives of so many, we must first increase hope, purpose, family and connection.
Date posted: 2020-07-26
Technology offers so much, yet how can we ensure it doesn't take just as much away?
Date posted: 2020-07-03
Many people are more productive when they don't feel tied to a desk.
Date posted: 2020-05-29
The world over, commitment to democractic values is worryingly weak.
Date posted: 2020-03-20
From China to Europe, they may grow old before they grow richer.
Date posted: 2020-03-05
Friendships between the young and old are a win/win solution to both a growing loneliness epidemic and greater numbers of time-poor working parents. The elderly often have under-utilised time which they are happy to give, and parents and young people are often in need of their support and love.
Date posted: 2020-02-09
There is increased discussion of how hard it is becoming to simply raise children. With the world's fertility rate converging towards just 1.7 children per woman, something is not right – especially because studies show that women would like to have more children but say that they are incapable of doing so for one reason or another.
Date posted: 2019-11-10
It is important to know our history, and perhaps especially that of the terribly violent 20th century (the most deadly period in human history), so that we can intelligently judge and take action to solve the problems we face today.
Date posted: 2019-10-09
A baby suffering from opioid withdrawal is born every 15 minutes.
Date posted: 2019-09-21
As our population ages, the homeless are getting older too. In the early 1990s, only 11 percent of the adult homeless population in the United States was aged 50 and over. It increased to 37 percent by 2003, and today half of America's homeless are over 50. The number of aged homeless is expected to continue to increase, and increased health care costs and shelter needs are inevitable.
Date posted: 2019-09-09
India's growth, once the horror of the alarmist West, is slowing sharply. In fact, the 2019 Economic Survey conducted by the Indian Ministry of Finance predicts that the country's fertility rate will fall below the replacement rate (generally regarded to be 2.1 children per woman) as soon as 2021.
Date posted: 2019-08-30
In the App Store's health and fitness category, the number of period trackers is now second only to running apps. Women are more empowered to conveniently access knowledge about their own fertility than ever before.
Date posted: 2019-07-15
As fertility plummets, could their fate be a warning to us?
Date posted: 2019-06-29
The U.S. fertility rate has now hit the lowest ever figures in American history, according to newly released provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control. The figures show a further 2% drop from 1.7655 children per woman in 2017 to 1.728 children per women in 2018.
Date posted: 2019-06-29
Big families are increasingly hard to come by these days. But, as I wrote in a recent article, many people would likely be happier with a bigger family than the average two that has become the norm in many countries around the world (and in a number of countries it is now creeping closer to just one.
Date posted: 2019-06-17
A question many parents grapple with.
Date posted: 2019-05-11
Increasingly, my friends are shutting down at least some of their social media accounts. It's not that they think the sites are bad in themselves. It's that they increasingly recognize that, rather than them controlling social media, social media is controlling them.
Date posted: 2019-05-01
In Africa the median age is 19.4 years; In Europe it is 41.8 years. Over 60 per cent of Africa's population is under the age of 25, and the continent's population is expected to double by 2050. In contrast, in Europe just 27 per cent of the population are under 25, and it is a continent in decline.
Date posted: 2019-04-26
South Korea's birth rate drops below 1.
Date posted: 2019-04-26
A first-of-its-kind prospective study.
Date posted: 2019-03-27
At 3.1 babies per woman, Israel's average fertility rate is much higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The second highest is just 2.15 babies per woman in Mexico, almost one child less per family.
Date posted: 2019-03-07
Japan's Deputy Prime Minister is under fire this week after saying that the country's diminishing population is due to women not having babies.
Date posted: 2019-02-10
Will the world's population really reach 11.2 billion in 2100? This week The Guardian provides a good summary of alternate world population projections which challenge this United Nations figure, and casts doubt on whether the world's population will really continue to grow until the end of this century
Date posted: 2019-02-02
China's statistics bureau announced a significant dip in the country's birth rate on Monday. The total population was announced to be 1.395 billion in 2018, a growth rate of .381 percent and 2 million fewer additional people than the year before, despite the government's move to a "two child" policy.
Date posted: 2019-02-02
While United Nations projections indicate that the world's population won't peak until about 2100, it seems China's population will be in decline much sooner than that.
Date posted: 2019-01-19
And the U.S. will be helping to fund them
Date posted: 2018-12-09
Four structural reasons why.
Date posted: 2018-10-15
India is expected to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2025. Despite this, the number of extreme poor in India drops by 44 people a minute and is expected to continue to fall sharply over the next two years.
Date posted: 2018-08-14
Will it be the first of many?
Date posted: 2018-03-28
A growing proportion of young people are addicted.
Date posted: 2018-03-13
Mothers are older and have fewer children.
Date posted: 2018-02-27
The job of 'mother' needs to be more highly esteemed.
Date posted: 2018-02-11
Why is sex going out of fashion?
Date posted: 2017-12-06
Despite population growth.
Date posted: 2017-11-07
Appreciation has more impact than financial incentives.
Date posted: 2017-11-04
In a capitalist economy it is hard to get away from the temptation to think that more 'stuff' equates to more happiness.
Date posted: 2017-09-30
The latest figures.
Date posted: 2017-07-31
Arguing that population is the cause is simplistic.
Date posted: 2017-07-15
President Putin explains why.
Date posted: 2017-07-07
Some recent statistics to make you feel grateful.
Date posted: 2017-06-21
Researchers suggest 90 million fewer people.
Date posted: 2017-06-02
If the non-religious have no babies, the religious may indeed inherit the earth.
Date posted: 2017-06-02
Most Americans say yes.
Date posted: 2017-05-23
Has your world changed?
Date posted: 2017-05-21
How children have historically protected political and moral values
Date posted: 2017-05-04
Cuba is well aware of its demographic woes and continues to think of ways to turn its low fertility rate around. The latest initiative is to give parental leave to the grandparents of newborns.
Date posted: 2017-04-01
Amid historic worries about population growth, people often forget that many countries around the world are, or will soon be, shrinking in size.
Date posted: 2017-02-21
More immigrant families are traditional families
Date posted: 2017-01-17
The latest positive U.S. family statistics.
Date posted: 2016-11-27
More traditional values could be a by-product.
Date posted: 2016-11-04
International migration is changing the face of the globe.
Date posted: 2016-11-04
There has recently been a resurrection of academics in favour of population engineering for the purpose of climate change and emissions reduction
Date posted: 2016-09-27
How are parents around the world actually managing the juggle?
Date posted: 2016-08-02
They may help boost the fertility rate in their home country.
Date posted: 2016-07-31
What Canadians say would improve family life for them.
Date posted: 2016-07-11
Why Canadian parents say no to three
Date posted: 2016-07-11
Population panic turns to concern about fertility problems.
Date posted: 2016-06-06
Birth rates are not recovering post-recession.
Date posted: 2016-06-05
Reflecting on changes to China's one child policy has often meant discussing the effects of a one-child family. Even after the recent change to a 'two child policy', Chinese couples overwhelmingly continue to choose to have only one child. The policy has become culturally engrained.
Date posted: 2016-04-30
America's largest demographic conference was held last week to discuss new demographic trends shaping the world. One research presentation focused on a new category called Living Apart Together" (LAT) is apparently emerging.
Date posted: 2016-04-13
Personally, my first reaction is to find this sort of technology unnatural and vaguely repellent. My second reaction is to distrust humankind with this kind of power given our penchant for often doing the wrong thing, especially when considering its potential application to human embryos rather than the farm animals and food we are talking about in this case.
Date posted: 2016-03-26
Millions of Chinese bachelors feel crippled by the pressure to find a wife in a country where there a few to be found.
Date posted: 2016-03-17
Mei Fong's recently released book One Child gives a harrowing insight into the continuing social cost of China's one child policy. An investigative journalist within China for many years, and of Chinese descent herself, throughout the book she touches on the unnatural destruction of family, the lack of dignity the policy afforded women (extending to downright brutality and late-term forced abortions), and the commodification of something as sacred as children.
Date posted: 2016-03-04
Japan has historically been wary of immigration, introducing foreign worker schemes to avoid it. The Japan Times has just published a five part series discussing the problems caused by the country's low birth rate and shrinking, ageing population, evidencing increasing concern for the country's plight.
Date posted: 2016-01-30
In his opening address to the Budapest Demography Forum, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban insisted that the European Union cannot afford to rely on immigration to build its future instead of families and children, when family is the centre of human development.
Date posted: 2015-11-19
Apparently the United Kingdom is the best place to die, followed by Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Belgium and Taiwan.
Date posted: 2015-10-18
The figures represent a fundamental and unprecendented shift from historic trends, and it remains to be seen whether Canada has done enough planning to deal with the challenges it will bring.
Date posted: 2015-10-18
While we often point out the low fertility rates around the world, in most countries the size of the population isn't actually contracting - yet. However, that is not the case in Japan any longer.
Date posted: 2015-09-23
Apparently parenthood makes a person more unhappy than divorce, unemployment and even the death of a partner, according to a study published this month in the journal Demography. If this is what journals and papers around the world are headlining, it doesn't bode well for future birth rates.
Date posted: 2015-09-05
Our time of life affects they way we use our money - whether we are looking to borrow or whether we are looking to save, whether we want a safe investment with a guaranteed return, or whether we want to take a risk. As we all know, there are currently a lot more elderly people in the world than ever before.
Date posted: 2015-08-22
It turns out that women have not always lived longer than men. A new study supported by the United States National Institute on Aging reveals that the trend only began during the turn of the 20th century.
Date posted: 2015-08-01
There are unprecedented numbers of childless and unmarried individuals among the aging Baby Boomer population, leading researchers to coin the new phrase 'elder orphans'.
Date posted: 2015-07-08
Claims the West is declining due to low fertility rates are exaggerated according to a new study by the University of Oxford. It is a hopeful finding.
Date posted: 2015-05-11
Figures released by the European Union's statistics agency late last week show that the number of children aged less than 15 in the 28-member bloc decreased by 10 million over the last twenty years, and it is a trend that is set to continue.
Date posted: 2015-04-28
On this day over 2 billion Christians around the world are celebrating Jesus' resurrection and the great joy and hope the Easter season brings. It is a hope which transcends world circumstances, such as the killing of Christians in Kenya, that we find ourselves struggling to comprehend.
Date posted: 2015-04-22
Many are anxious that Putin be stopped both because of his questionable conduct towards his own people and his irreverence for international law. However, demography has a hold on Russia's future power which Putin in well aware of.
Date posted: 2015-04-22
The sex educators preaching to our teenagers are beginning to realise that, if they want young people to view having babies in a positive light, they might have to change their focus from simply drumming home how not to get pregnant.
Date posted: 2015-04-22
Debate stirred by International Women's Day has been thought-provoking. The media abounds with encouragement for women in CEO positions and strategies for how more could and should get there.
Date posted: 2015-04-07
Last week I watched a tragic news article about a block of Christchurch flats where, on two separate occasions within the last couple of years, a resident has died in their apartment and not been discovered for over a month. What does this say about interaction between neighbours and family support structures?
Date posted: 2015-04-07
What is interesting is that fertility rates are lowest among women who are educated and receive higher incomes in many countries around the world.
Date posted: 2015-03-12
March 8th was International Women's Day. In the words of the organisers, the day represents an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women, advance and appreciate them.
Date posted: 2015-03-12
There are outcries about immigration in a number of countries around the world. Yet the economic reality remains - most of those countries need more working age people. Will we soon see more competition amongst countries to entice the most attractive immigrant's from around the world?
Date posted: 2015-03-12
Apparently many believed that the United States birth rate would recover once the economy does. However, now that the economy and average wages are indeed starting to go up, it seems that the fertility rate remains stubbornly low.
Date posted: 2015-02-27
There are some Catholics who need to be reassured that they are not compelled to keep on having children without regard to their circumstances - perhaps they misunderstand this teaching and the Pope wishes to clarify it in order to help and guide them.
Date posted: 2015-02-23
In many cultures children have traditionally been expected to look after their elderly parents. I think it is lovely tradition that it would be a shame to lose. However, more and more elderly people are finding themselves working long past traditional retirement ages, largely because there are fewer and fewer children to support them.
Date posted: 2015-01-19
During the next 5 years, for the first time in history, the number of people in the world aged 65 years and older will outnumber children aged 5 years or younger.
Date posted: 2014-12-12
Giving up driving takes away so much independence for an elderly person that it is no wonder many are very hesitant to give it up.
Date posted: 2014-12-10
A visit to the hospice in China where her father was recently moved left her shocked at the conditions for those who did not have family to sit with and look after them, and worried about the dignity of the elderly in China in general - even more so given the increase in the elderly population to come.
Date posted: 2014-10-30
It is interesting that, once a child is born, family law principles all seem to boil down to "the well-being of the child". At least in theory. Yet, before birth, in conceiving children, society seems to place so much more weight on the adult's 'right' to that child at any cost or 'right' to be happy than on a child's well-being and natural need to have a stable family unit to fall back on.
Date posted: 2014-10-26
Two Australian legal academics have mooted the idea that, as emissions trading schemes are so in vogue, one way to reduce population growth is to include family planning in carbon markets.
Date posted: 2014-10-19
Prisons around the world are fast finding that they need to learn to deal with older inmates - one more societal institution to be affected by the aging population.
Date posted: 2014-09-22
Dubai's gender imbalance is 'unnatural' according to a report released last week by the Dubai Statistics Centre. The statistics show that 75.77% of Dubai's population of approximately 2.2 million are men, and just 24.23% are women - second only to Qatar who has a higher gender imbalance still.
Date posted: 2014-09-14
South Koreans will be extinct by 2750 if nothing is done to stop the nation's falling fertility rate, according to a recently released study by The National Assembly Research Service in Seoul.
Date posted: 2014-09-14
While human babies might not be increasing much in number in China despite the relaxation of the one child policy, pets are becoming much more prevalent.
Date posted: 2014-08-30
Will we all be African again one day soon? It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. There has been an unprecedented demographic shift this century towards an increasingly African world.
Date posted: 2014-08-30
The Moody's Global Credit Research Team, which regularly prepares reports for investors and finance firms, warned investors this month in a special report that 'the unprecedented pace of aging' will slow economic growth over the next 20 years worldwide.
Date posted: 2014-08-16
When China relaxed its one child policy late last year onlookers around the world expected a cultural shift. The Chinese government and investors predicted a baby boom, with government officials making the application process cumbersome lest too many people apply at once.
Date posted: 2014-08-16
New Zealand has a uniquely ethnically diverse society, according to a recently released New Zealand demographical report. I was surprised to learn that as many as one in four people living in New Zealand in 2013 was born in another country. In fact, Auckland (New Zealand's largest city) is one the most immigrant-dependent cities in the world, with 39 percent of Aucklanders born overseas.
Date posted: 2014-07-23
The latest demographic news from Japan is good news for pilots, but bad news for travellers. Thousands of flights in Japan could be cancelled this summer because the country's rapidly aging population has led to a nationwide shortage of pilots.
Date posted: 2014-07-22
Are rags-to-riches stories really the birth-right of every American? Maybe not.
Date posted: 2014-06-25
It is a new reality around the world that fertility is a government issue and children must now be encouraged in case we end up with none at all in generations to come (or not come).
Date posted: 2014-06-08
Japan is finally starting to sit up and take notice of its fertility dilemma. Adding to our discussion of Japan recently on the blog, a Japanese government panel investigating solutions to the problem released its proposals on Tuesday this week.
Date posted: 2014-05-21
A newsreel archive company has recently uploaded 85,000 historic films made between 1896 and 1976 onto Youtube (under than name British Pathe if you want to check them out. One in particular relates to demography.
Date posted: 2014-05-04
Caring about the environment, caring about people and encouraging new life can and should go hand in hand. Sadly, that is not always the way passionate environmentalists view things.
Date posted: 2014-04-21
Shockingly, almost half of Europe's young adults still live with their parents, despite the fact that they are likely more highly educated than them. This record level of dependency has both social and demographic implications.
Date posted: 2014-04-06
At a time when health systems the world over are grappling with a higher proportion of older people in the face of demographic change and increasing costs, baby boomers are stepping in to fill some of the gaps.
Date posted: 2014-04-06
Are today's 30-somethings commitment phobes? In his recent book German author, Oliver Jeges, certainly paints this portrait of his peers, going so far as to call them "Generation Maybe". He claims that his generation is indecisive about faith, relationships, work, diet, values and ideology. Drowning in a world of freedom and a myriad of choices, they flit between possibilities unsure where to settle.
Date posted: 2014-04-06
The renowned Lord Winston of Hammersmith is in New Zealand at the moment visiting schools to educate students about infertility and the dangers of waiting too long to have children.
Date posted: 2014-03-20
Many people have a vague idea that too many people could have something to do with the existence of hunger in the world. This is often used as an argument for population control.
Date posted: 2014-03-20
I was interested to see how Rwanda is doing demographically almost exactly twenty years on from the genocide which occurred in 1994. During that time over 800,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic group were killed by their Hutu neighbours and Hutu moderates were also eliminated in the killing spree which left a third of the country's population either dead or in refugee camps abroad.
Date posted: 2014-03-20
Statistics released this week show that women in New Zealand between the ages of 35 and 39 are having more babies than women aged 20 - 24 for the first time. In fact, the average age of first time mothers in New Zealand is now one of the highest in the developed world. The number of babies born in 2013 in New Zealand was also the lowest number since 2003, down 4% from 2012.
Date posted: 2014-03-03
Demographic issues are increasingly being recognised as important around the world.
Date posted: 2014-03-03
More companies are investing in their employees' health as the workforce ages. Germany's main rail service, Deutsche Bahn, is one such company that is embracing - or at least accepting - demographic change and an aging workforce. It wants to keep its experienced workers until they are over 65, so is taking active steps to do so.
Date posted: 2014-03-03
It has long been known that birth order affects personality to some extent.
Date posted: 2014-03-03
The British government's chief medical officer has recently warned women that they may remain childless if they leave having children too late, once again stirring the debate about the rising age of mothers.
Date posted: 2014-03-03
One in eight people go to bed hungry according to the latest figures. That's more than 840 million people every day, despite the fact that enough food is produced to go around.
Date posted: 2014-01-20
A recent United Nations fertility report collates some interesting statistics about the fertility of the world as a whole. Put simply, - and no surprises here - it finds that the developed world is not reproducing at the rate necessary to ensure the replacement of generations.
Date posted: 2014-01-19
A new brain connectivity study published last week has found that men and women's brains really are wired differently - surely something that is already clear to anyone who lives, works or generally associates with both men and women?
Date posted: 2013-12-22
It was recently announced that China's one child policy will be relaxed. Families are to be allowed a second child if at least one parent is an only child. Currently, only families with two only-child parents are allowed to have two babies.
Date posted: 2013-12-22
Fear and contempt is increasingly the way the ever more marginalised Roma are viewed in Europe. Some argue that the two trends are worrying and mutually reinforcing: marginalisation breeds contempt, and vice versa, and that the only escape from this trap is to invest in the education of the Roma people.
Date posted: 2013-12-04
Despite enticing incentives from the government, South Korean women struggle with the choice to leave their careers to raise children. The modern South Korean woman is ambitious. She has worked hard for her career and is hesitant to give it up.
Date posted: 2013-11-10
The demographic story we usually hear is one of people living longer and longer and more people than ever blowing out 100 birthday candles. However, a new study in the United Kingdom has found that this may not actually be forever the case.
Date posted: 2013-10-22
The results of New Zealand's first census in seven years (it is usually every five years but was postponed due to the Christchurch earthquake) have been awaited with anticipation for some time now. The results show a significant shift in population from the provinces to the country's largest city, Auckland.
Date posted: 2013-10-22
Changing demography is affecting economies around the world, and we could see a shift in the power of the world's major players over the next few years. Broadly speaking, the winners will be those who have enough people in their work forces. That means fertility rates above replacement level and immigration which is higher than emigration.
Date posted: 2013-10-22
For the first time in history, by the year 2050 people over 60 will outnumber children under the age of 15. Is the world ready for this massive demographic change? A recently released United Nations report suggests not.
Date posted: 2013-10-22