Ruth Institute Blog

by Denyse O’Leary

It is mainly religious people who raise children, and more women in America are religious.

First, the context: Modern political science — which readily understands imperialism, resistance, and clash of competing interests — does not similarly understand “the wasting away of nations.” That, says David Goldman, author of How Civilizations Die: (and why Islam is dying too), is because political scientists tend to assume that people will follow their rational self-interest. In fact, they often don’t. Read more…

by Michael Cook

Demographic denialists are ignoring the perils of an ageing population.

Like many others, the US-based Center for Biological Diversity was aghast at the arrival of the 7 billionth person today. “Overpopulation and overconsumption are the root causes of environmental destruction. They’re driving species extinct, destroying wildlife habitat, and undermining the basic needs of all life at an unprecedented rate. It has to stop.” Read more…

by Marcus Roberts

A couple of related pieces today that both underline a theme that has been commonplace at Demography is Destiny over the past few months.  If you have to ask what that theme is then you obviously have not been reading with the necessary assiduity and I am not going to help you. Read more…

by Marcus Roberts

Bosnia and Herzegovina has another 650 years or so.  Macau has about the same.  Germany has just over 1500 years and Brazil another 3000 years.  Until what? Until their populations disappear entirely! Read more…

by Marcus Roberts

We have discussed recently on this blog the effect of demography on a country’s economy and the potential link between fertility rates and the recession. Today I would like to draw your attention to an article from USAToday which suggests that the link runs both ways. Read more…

BY JONATHAN V. LAST

Low fertility threatens the world’s economic future, but a new report ignores the danger.

In 2004, the United Nations published demographic projections suggesting that the world in general, and the West in particular, was in real trouble: Persistently low fertility meant that the population of most industrialized nations would shrink in the coming decades. The U.N. report seemed to crystallize decades of increasingly gloomy predictions. Read more…

by Colin Mason

I remember standing in my room in the Cosmos Hotel, sleep-deprived from airports and loaded down with equipment. The room may have once been handsome, but now its current condition is stale and threadbare — its blue carpet has thinned and its twin beds have sunken into visibly concave shapes. I turn the shower faucet, it spits yellow-tinged water. Read more…

a speech by Don Feder to the Moscow Demographic Summit, June 29, 2011

Imagine that you’re walking in the forest. There’s a layer of fresh snow on the ground. Suddenly you realize that you’re lost. You’re cold. You’re tired. You’re hungry. If that weren’t enough, there are wolves howling in the distance. This is beginning to sound like a Russian novel. Read more…

“The Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and The Future of Humankind” concluded with the adoption of a Declaration demanding that governments everywhere adopt pro-family demographic policies.  The Declaration was adopted by participants at the June 29-30 Summit held at the Russian State Social University, Russia’s largest university.

Translated from Russian, The Declaration states in part: Read more…

So much for the over -population groupies.

by Marcus Roberts

Back in 2009, the leadership in Japan realised that there it was facing a massive demographic problem. This problem was not rampant population growth, but the opposite – declining fertility and a growing elderly population. According to The Washington Post: Read more…

by Anna Halpine

Who really believes women’s reproductive health is the main concern in House Bill 96?

Last week in Manila, Malcolm Potts, grand-daddy of the international family planning movement, announced that unless the much debated “Reproductive Health” bill is passed in this session of Congress, the Philippines would become the next Somalia. No surprises in that. Within the same week, however, Bill Clinton, also visiting Manila, amazed everyone (including his wife, no doubt) by stating that the growing Philippines population is an asset to the country, and that its babies, expanding the population at a rate of 2.04 per cent a year, are a “massive natural resource”. Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

How good are your children at relating to their grandparents? How would they respond if granny developed Alzheimer’s? These questions beg an even bigger one: how will societies with an average of 2 or less children per woman cope with a burgeoning elderly population and a growing worldwide epidemic of dementia? South Korea has come up with answers in a remarkable campaign. Read more…

by Joshua Mercer

Lefties are fond of condemning the Right for our worries about Demographic Winter.

They’re fond of condemning us, but not so keen about disputing us.  That’s because the facts needed to rebut our worries are few and far between.

But there are points to be made in rebuttal.  I’ve never seen any such point wielded by a Lefty.  So, let me call your attention to one made by an EEEEEEEEVIL Right winger, John Derbyshire.  It comes from this week’s broadcast of his gloomy but hilarious podcast “Radio Derb.”

This is a favorite selling point of the immigration boosters. Japan, China, the European countries all have below-replacement birthrates, and so aging populations. Read more…

Pete Chagnon – OneNewsNow -

A United Nations group that promotes abortion has released some controversial recommendations concerning “global warming.”

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), birth control and access to family-planning facilities can be a valuable weapon in the fight against supposed “climate change.” The UNFPA sites overpopulation as one of the factors in the earth’s “capacity to adjust” to climate change. Read more…

Carolyn Moynihan, Mercatornet.com

Struggling with family decay and population decline, Russia wants the UN to get down to tin tacks on the subject of human rights.

Let’s face it: there is a lot wrong with Russia. Twenty years after the fall of communism the man who gave the Soviet system the coup de grace, Mikhail Gorbachev, is complaining that there is no democracy in the country and that the Kremlin is not interested in fighting corruption or solving the murders of prominent critics such as journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Read more…

Dermot Grenham, Mercatornet.com

The received wisdom among demographers and other social sciences is that as countries develop economically and socially their fertility rates decline. However, a recent article in Nature¹ has shown that at higher levels of development, as measured by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), the fall in fertility goes into reverse. Could this be the answer to the problem of ageing populations? Read more…

William West

Britain is bracing itself for the ageing of its population with the latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that the proportion of people aged over 65 is set to rise dramatically. The release of the latest figures come at a time when Britain is already struggling to fund its benefits and health care systems moving commentators to warn that too little is being done to prepare for the ageing of the population. Read more…