Not only do population rates continue their dramatic downward trend in the developed world, but a sharp and persistent decline is also taking place in the less developed world. Contrary to Vice President Al Gore and most of the liberal media - if we look and listen - we'll see that we'll soon be on the verge of declining population worldwide, not over-population.
A November New York Times article said, "Unlike dips in population growth throughout history, this slide, which began in the '60s, was not caused by a natural or economic disaster or war or a plague. There's no Black Death to blame, no World War I, no Great Depression. This decline is widespread; it is steady, and the current decline shows no signs of reversing as earlier ones have."
Overpopulation is certainly the major reason for the Western nations and the United Nations pushing for abortion in underdeveloped lands. But is this still a valid claim (if it ever was)? Most well informed people know that, across the Western World, birthrates have dropped below replacement level. A recent HLI Bulletin gave us some sobering statistics.
35 nations are dying in both Eastern and Western Europe. Fifteen European countries now fill more coffins than cradles. Only two countries are above replacement birth rates - little Malta with 2.4 children per completed family and isolated Muslim Albania with 2.8.
The average married European woman now has 1.35 children in her lifetime. Italy's birthrate of 1.2 is the lowest in the Western World. The New York Times said in November that, in Italy, government officials expect "empty classrooms and thousands of unemployed teachers, with shortages of service industry workers and health care personnel to care for older people."
Spain is close behind Italy, while European Russia, at 1.1, has the lowest overall birth rate in the world. Last year its death rate was 70% higher than its birth rate.
Europe's de-population bomb, in both the East and West, is fast producing a huge demographic vacuum into which are moving millions of Muslims and Arabs who have large families.
Some 5 million Muslims now live in dying France. In Germany, Muslims have built some 1,500 mosques. Brussels, the capital of Belgium, has entire classrooms of children without a single Caucasian child in them.
By the year 2000, for the first time in history, there will be more Muslims in the world than Catholics. This, thanks to contraception, sterilization, surgical abortion and abortifacient drugs. Meanwhile the threat of legalized euthanasia hangs over the Western World like a hungry vulture. This may well be the social "solution" for large numbers of elderly people needing to be cared for by a dwindling work force.
Japan, with fewer than 1.4 children per family, is one of the fastest aging nations in the world. Whole villages have no one left but elderly folks. A September New York Times article reported that, because of the shortage of young wage earners, Japan's rate of savings will be zero or even negative by the year 2010. By 2025, 73% of Japan's income will be going for social welfare, largely for health care and pensions for the elderly. Of course, the Chinese are the worst off. For 15 years, the Red Regime has forcibly inserted abortifacient IUD's into mothers after the birth of their first child. After two children, the State forcibly sterilizes them. Mothers, pregnant without the permission of the Communist Party, are subjected to forced abortions. It has been 15 years of a one child per family policy, resulting in mostly boys. In a few years, there will be social turbulence and violence when tens of millions of young men cannot find wives.
The birth dearth has spread well beyond the developed world. Twenty-seven developing countries now have fewer than 2.2 children per woman, which means they are not reproducing their own numbers. In 1985, the world's total fertility rate - the number of children born per woman in her reproductive lifetime - was 4.2. Now, worldwide, it�s 2.9 and dropping. Today 79 countries are dying because of birth rates below replacement level. These countries are home to 40% of the world's population. By the year 2015, an estimated two-thirds of all the people on earth will live in countries with birth rates at or below replacement level, which is 2.1 babies per woman.
The Wall Street Journal in February of 1997 said, "Villages left will be bereft of children, and schools will be closed for lack of students. If the human face of this population implosion is melancholy, do understand the economic consequences are nothing short of grim. Labor shortages will cramp production. Housing markets will grow moribund. This in turn will create a drag on real estate and other sectors of the countries."
Assuming that we will have a shrinking population, but with the decline much more rapid in the West than in the South, we will see a global redistribution of world population. At the present time, the ratio of population is approximately 4 in the underdeveloped nations to 1 in those more developed. But if these projections continue, by the year 2050, the ratio will be 7 to 1. For example, as of today, the ratio of the population of Europe, compared to Africa, is about 1 to 1. But in another 50 years, there will be three Africans for every one European.
Aging will be another impact of de-population. In 1900, the median age of the world's population was around 20 years. Today it's about 25. But with the continuing drastic reduction in birth rates, the aging population will raise the median age to 40 years by 2050.
In some countries, it will be much worse. In Japan, the median age will be 53, Germany 55 and Italy 58 - and there won't be many children. Another way of looking at it is, if these population trends continue, in another 50 years there will be three times as many old people as young children in the lesser developed nations, but in the West the ratio will be 8 to 1. To take the most extreme example, if Italy's reproductive rate stays at 1.2 (you need 2.1 to replace), by the year 2050 only 2% of Italians will be under five years of age, but 40% will be over 65.
This is the obvious question. Are the above figures just predictions by a few, or can these be substantiated? In support, there is now a major, well-documented report by Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher with the American Enterprise Institute and the Harvard Center. In a major October 16, 1997 Wall Street Journal analysis, he reported on the October General Population Conference in Beijing. The Conference was to focus on the threat of over-population. However, the meeting began with a presentation by some of the world's best demographers offering a dramatic reassessment of the world's demographic future. They are now seriously considering the possibility that the world's population will peak in our lifetime and then commence an indefinite decline.
He also details this de-population scenario, set out most recently by the United Nations Population Division�s 1996 revision of its biannual compendium, World Population Prospects, as the oldest, largest and most intensive of various contemporary attempts to outline likely future demographic trends.
Let's look at what these authoritative numbers are telling us. Recall again that in an underdeveloped country, the average woman must have 2.2 babies in her lifetime in order to maintain a stable population. In a developed nation it's 2.1
By the UN estimate, total fertility rates in developed regions have fallen in the last six years from 1.7 to 1.5 babies per woman. Clearly, developed nations are dying. It estimates that this will drop farther in the next decade to about 1.4. This means there will then be 3 people dying for every 2 babies being born in the Western World.
There's a middle group called Less Developed Nations. Their rate had averaged about 3.3 in the early '90s. It's projected to drop to about 2.0 in 20 years and to 1.6 by the middle of the next century.
The third grouping are the Least Developed Countries. Their total fertility rate a decade ago had been about 5.0. This is expected to drop below 4 by 2010, below 3 by 2020 and below replacement level by 2035.
Remember, these are United Nations statistics. This means that, if these trends continue as predicted, there will be global de-population, beginning in a little over 40 years. The UN estimates predict that the actual population of the world between 2040 and 2050 will drop by almost 100 million. From then on, world population will shrink by roughly 25% with each successive generation.
So why does the Clinton-Gore administration and the European Union keep dwelling on overpopulation? They certainly have access to these statistics. The answer is almost certainly what was clearly laid out in the October issue of The Connector. It's most likely that the primary reason is the quest for power. If the West is to have global control over the underdeveloped South, it must reduce population in the South or lose worldwide dominance.
The West has reduced its own population with contraception, abortifacients, sterilization and abortion. Now, through the United Nations, and with the eager help and aggressive push by the United States through President Clinton, it continues to massively dump those practices on the families of the developing world.
What lies ahead? A world full of wheelchairs, increasingly infirm senior citizens, and escalating demands for medical service and care? Can fewer and fewer young people take care of more and more old people? Perhaps the answer will be massive euthanasia.
The bottom line is that we will all get old. Will there be someone to take care of you, since the State may not be able to? Ben Wattenburg, one of our most famous and reliable demographers today, has said it very succinctly. "You want security in your old age? Then you don't put dollars into Social Security - you put in babies."