U.N. windows look out on fewer people
The United Nations latest global population report, World Population Prospects: 1994 Revision, released in late 1995, well documents the sharp slowdown currently underway in the growth of world population.
For instance, in the U.N.’s previous world population report, the 1992 Revision, the “medium-variant” projection of the world’s 1994 population was set at 5.665 billion but in the 1994 Revision the figure was cut back to 5.629 billion — 36 million fewer people in two projections made just two years apart!
Similarly, population projections for the year 2025 were slashed by more than 178 million people: 8.472 billion in the 1992 Revision versus 8.294 billion in the 1994 Revision . Almost half of the decline — some 87 million people — was due to Revision s in the expected 2025 populations of African countries, especially those of Western Africa. (World Population Prospects: 1994 Revision, United Nations, 1995, pp. 133-135.)
Throughout much of Africa, Total Fertility Rates (TFR) — the number of children born per woman per reproductive lifetime — were found by the U.N.’s World Population Prospects: 1994 Revision, to be considerably lower than previously calculations made just two years earlier. The latest Revision found that the TFR had “changed significantly in 16 countries: 2 were upward changes; and 14 downward.”
Rwanda exhibited the largest downward adjustment: 2.0 children. Based on new demographic surveys the Rwandan TFR for 1990-95 was lowered from 8.5 in the 1992 Revision to 6.5 for the 1994 Revision . (World Population Prospects 1994 Revision, United Nations, 1995, pp. 13-36.)
A 1995 Asia-Pacific Population Research Report, authored by Professor Ronald Freedom of the University of Michigan and issued by the Honolulu based East-West Center, details the fertility declines that have taken place throughout Asia. Focusing on 24 Asian countries which collectively account for some 3.1 billion people — about 56% of the world’s population — Dr. Freedman, relying on fertility estimates prepared in 1992 by the United Nations, found that “Asian fertility has declined overall by 39%” in recent years. According to Freedman, the drops which have occurred are “62% of the decline necessary for reaching the population-replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.”
Freedman concluded that “the fertility transition [to replacement level growth] is virtually complete in East Asia, well under way in most of Southeast and South Asia, and beginning in Muslim West Asia.” Six countries in East and Southeast Asia — Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand — were found to be “at or below replacement-level fertility.” (China, whose 1985-90 total fertility rate was listed as 2.38 in the report, has subsequently been found to have declined to 1.8 by 1994, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s World Population Profile: 1994.)
(1995 Asia-Pacific Population Research Report: Asia’s Recent Fertility Decline and prospects for future demographic change, (East-West Center: Honolulu), January 1995.)
Half of all the world’s men who have undergone vasectomies are in China and their numbers are rising, based on a study reported by China’s Xinhua news agency. The number of Chinese men who have had a Vasectomy is about 23 million, accounting for half the world’s total, according to Liu Yunrong, a senior researcher at China’s National Research Institute for Family Planning.
Xinhua attributed the situation to “Chinese men…tak[ing] on more responsibility in family planning.” Apparently, few Chinese men are willing to use condoms and the study did not address the question of how many men were in fact coercively sterilized. (Reuter, Beijing, 13 June.)
