The authoritative British medical journal The Lancet reported yesterday that 91 out of 195 countries have fertility rates below replacement level.
The reasons are less infant mortality and access to contraception.
In the West a subsidiary reason is the idea that having overpopulation is bad for the planet. This idea was current in the 1960s and 1970s, never wholly went away and has now been revived linked to worries about climate change.
More generally, a falling birth rate may indicate a lack of a civilisation's confidence in itself and its future.
Very important are the 104 countries which have fertility rate at or above the replacement rate, including Niger where the average woman has 7 children. By 2070 an additional 2.4 billion people are projected by the U.N.: 1.3 billion in Africa, 0.9 billion in Asia and 0.2 billion in the rest of the world. Africa's population was forecast in 2013 to double by 2050.
Here is a graph to illustrate what is happening based on the forecasts of the U.N.
The reasons are less infant mortality and access to contraception.
In the West a subsidiary reason is the idea that having overpopulation is bad for the planet. This idea was current in the 1960s and 1970s, never wholly went away and has now been revived linked to worries about climate change.
More generally, a falling birth rate may indicate a lack of a civilisation's confidence in itself and its future.
Very important are the 104 countries which have fertility rate at or above the replacement rate, including Niger where the average woman has 7 children. By 2070 an additional 2.4 billion people are projected by the U.N.: 1.3 billion in Africa, 0.9 billion in Asia and 0.2 billion in the rest of the world. Africa's population was forecast in 2013 to double by 2050.
Here is a graph to illustrate what is happening based on the forecasts of the U.N.
What's worrying is that it's not just a European or a white disease. Fertility rates are collapsing everywhere. Every country that gets infected by western liberal democratic ideologies and capitalism begins to die.
ReplyDeleteIt is much less simple than that. Iran's birthrate is 1.5 per woman. The human race's birthrate is collapsing but not in Africa or Asia. It will collapse there one day but not before Africans become a vastly larger proportion of humanity than at present.
DeleteIran's birthrate is 1.5 per woman. The human race's birthrate is collapsing but not in Africa or Asia.
DeleteIt's very definitely collapsing in East Asia. Take a look at fertility rates in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. And it's collapsing in parts of the Islamic world, especially where western cultural poison has been at work.
Although I'm certain that capitalism and liberalism and diseased western ideologies in general (like feminism) are largely responsible it's possible that industrialisation and urbanisation are factors that always lead to demographic collapse. In which case we're going to need to rethink just about everything.
It will collapse there one day but not before Africans become a vastly larger proportion of humanity than at present.
Yes, that's very probably true. And worrying.
Iran fifty years ago had a very high birth rate. I do not know why the birthrate has fallen so far there. I wonder if anyone does.
ReplyDeleteIran fifty years ago had a very high birth rate. I do not know why the birthrate has fallen so far there. I wonder if anyone does.
DeleteIran is not exactly a traditional society of nomadic shepherds. It's at least a semi-developed semi-industrialised semi-urbanised society. And in the postwar period it absorbed an enormous amount of American cultural poison. Diseases like feminism became well established.
Young people started to develop the same sort of worship of western culture that has afflicted east Asian societies.
Iran is an "advanced" Islamic nation. That's why it's committing demographic suicide.
If it were not for U.S. sanctions things would probably be much worse. At least the sanctions provide a reason for hating the West, and hating the West is a very very healthy thing indeed. But unfortunately it seems that western decadence already has a major foothold.
I understand that the Iranians still love the West. Yes they are the most Western people in the Middle East. 'Iran’s birthrate reached a peak of 6.4 children per couple after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which was among the world’s highest at the time. But by 1990 experts were estimating that Iran could be home to 140mn people if the rate was left unchecked, so to combat the rise Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed birth control and the rate dropped rapidly to 1.6 in 2012, with the unofficial figure believed to be less than that in 2016.' High property prices are said to be part of the reason for the drop according to this article: http://www.intellinews.com/iran-s-falling-marriage-birth-rates-spell-trouble-for-country-s-demographics-106037/
DeleteWhat I find anazing is that supposed intelligent people think that on a planet with finite space and finite resources that there is not a finite level of population that can be reached before people start to act like rats in a barrel.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find anazing is that supposed intelligent people think that on a planet with finite space and finite resources that there is not a finite level of population that can be reached before people start to act like rats in a barrel.
ReplyDeleteThank Heaven for Western cultural poison. Thank God the times we live in allow me to earn my own money, travel and study, and to not be saddled with a marriage and children I never wanted. -- a free woman
ReplyDelete