Popcorn

World Population Growth Slowing

On 29 April 1994, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest report on world population, World Population Profile: 1994,1 which disclosed the following facts regarding an unprecedented slowdown in world population growth:

• The world’s current population growth rate is “1.5 percent,” the lowest rate in some 40 years (5).

• “The [population] growth rate of China…[which] has been declining since the 1960s,” has now fallen below replacement level. The report placed China’s 1994 total fertility rate at just 1.8 children per woman per reproductive lifetime (9, A-23).

• “Eighty-six countries…have low rates of 20 or fewer births per 1,000 population. Countries with high birth rates represent only 21 percent of world population, while those with low birth rates represent 45 percent” (27).

• “Most developed countries have achieved low fertility rates of under 2.2 children per woman [the replacement or zero growth rate]. More than 20 developing countries also have achieved such low levels. Together, these low fertility rate countries represent nearly half of the world’s population” (29).

• “Fertility levels have fallen so low in some countries, mainly in Europe, that no return to ‘replacement level’ fertility is expected in the foreseeable future” (29).

• Fertility rates throughout the world have been dropping so rapidly that the Census Bureau cut its three-year-old estimate of world population in the year 2000 by 120 million, and in the year 2020 by more than 300 million (A-1, 1994 and 1991 editions).

• In 2020, “121 million fewer people [are] expected in the 16 countries with [the highest rates of] AIDS.” Those countries are Burkina, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, Cote d‘Ivorie, Kenya, Malwai, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Haiti, and Thailand (65).

Europe Is Steadily Disappearing

The entire continent of Europe, after years of well-below replacement level fertility rates in nearly every one of its nations, is on the verge of an absolute decline in population.

The June 1994 issue of Population Today (2), published by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB),2 indicated the extent of the problem: “No fewer than nine countries…in Europe, now have natural [population] decrease; that is, more annual deaths than births.” PRB’S 1994 World Population Data Sheet identified the nine countries as Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

Population Today also listed the total fertility rates in several European nations. Each rate was a new all-time low for the particular country: Ukraine 1.7; France 1.66; Russia 1.6; Spain 1.23. The Spanish rate was said to be “the world’s lowest birth rate.” (But see Italy, below.)

The April 1994 issue of Population Today (1, 2) reported the shocking fact that Russia’s birth rate had fallen below the country’s death rate. According to the PRB publication, Russia’s 1993 birth rate was “just 9.7 per 1,000 population — probably the lowest ever recorded for any country.” Coupled with a death rate of 14.5 per 1,000 population, Russia experienced a natural decrease of 4.8 per 1,000, resulting in a population loss of “about 700,000 people in 1993.”

Lack of Bambinos Dooms Italy

According to a July 30 Reuter article, Italy’s National Statistics Institute reported that the “plunging birth rate in…Italy has reached an all-time low and for the first time since World War I burials…outnumbered births.”

The Institute said that only “538,000 babies were born in 1993 — the lowest number recorded since the founding of modern Italy in 1870.” The Institute’s report noted that “in 1993, 5,265 more Italians died than were born…the first time since 1918 that deaths outnumbered births.” The country’s total fertility rate was placed at just “1.21 babies…born for every Italian woman of childbearing age.”

The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was said to be planning to “tackle one of the [country’s] biggest problems linked to the dropping birth rate — pensions.” According to Italian economists, “the number of retired people will soon exceed those…work[ing] and put an impossible burden on the current, generous pension system.”

Meanwhile, PRB’s 1994 Population Data Sheet put Italy’s “population doubling time” at “2,310 years,” a considerable reduction from the previous years calculation of 3,466 years.3 Similarly, PRB now unaccountably estimated that Italy’s 2010 population would be 58.1 million — up from the previous year’s prediction of 56.4 — and 2025’s population was placed at 56.1 million, over 4 million more than the 1993 estimate!

Back in the real world, however, Italy’s population had already begun to slowly erode away.

More ZPG Nonsense

PRI recently received another of those unceasing solicitations from Zero Population Growth (ZPG) inviting participation in a “critical National Referendum” on population growth. This time ZPG enclosed a card of purported facts about population growth.

The first “fact” stated: “In the 6 seconds it takes you to read this sentence, 24 people will be added to the Earth’s population” — yielding 126,144,000 yearly. But just 3 sentences below, ZPG said that the world’s population was “increasing by 95 million every single year.” That’s another inflated statistic (by some 5 to 8 million), but then whoever said ZPG could handle even simple arithmetic?