Low Fertility and Economic Crisis
By Father John Flynn, LC
ROME, FEB. 3, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Sustainable development is the imperative of the 21st century and cannot be achieved without improving reproductive health: words expressed at a recent executive board meeting by UNFPA executive director Babatunde Osotimehin, according to a Feb. 1 press release. Read more…
A few weeks ago Marcus commented on Russia’s enthusiasm for the coming of what is believed to be the belt of the Virgin Mary. Normally situated at the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, the relic made of camel wool is believed to have the power to boost fertility. The National Post reports yesterday that the Russian people really have come out in force! Braving cold and snow, Moscow residents were willing to stand in a 5km line just to touch the belt: Read more…
by Joel Kotkin
The world’s population recently passed the 7 billion mark, and, of course, the news was greeted with hysteria and consternation in the media. “It’s not hard to be alarmed,” intoned National Geographic. “We should all be afraid, very afraid,” warned the Guardian. Read more…
by Michael Cook
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…
Really nicely put together video.
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…
A demographic summit to be held in Moscow next week sees family values as the key to Russia’s population woes.
Is there any nation as contrary in its demographics as Russia? While the world’s population police obsess about the ongoing “explosion” of the human species, Russia is on a depopulation slide and in danger of imploding. Again, while the world’s conscience is stirred by Asia’s 163 million missing females, Russia has a gender deficit of 10 million men. And, while “family planning” nearly everywhere else means preventing births at all costs, in Russia it now means reminding people to have a child or three. Read more…
An article in today’s New York Times (“Russians Adopt U.S. tactics In Opposing Abortion”) mischaracterizes the upcoming Moscow Demographic Summit: The Family and The Future of Humankind – June 29-30 a the Russian State Social University – as “an international anti-abortion meeting.” Read more…
World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs called Hungary’s new Constitution “a triumph for human rights and the family.”
The Constitution, signed by Hungarian President Pal Schmitt late last month, states in Article 2 that “The life of the fetus will be protected from conception.” It also defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Read more…
So much for the over -population groupies.
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 Jenny Purt, PA
Marriage rates in England and Wales are at their lowest since records began, new statistics show.
Just 21.3 out of every 1,000 males aged 16 plus were married in 2009, down from a rate of 22.0 in 2008, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
The proportion of women aged 16 plus who were married fell from 19.9 in 2008 to 19.2 in 2009.
The rates were the lowest since calculations of rates began in 1862. Read more…
by Steven W. Mosher
As I write, there is a battle royal underway in the Philippine Congress. On the one side are the Planned Parenthood types, backed by well-funded international organizations, who are attempting to ram through legislation that would cripple the Filipino birth rate. On the other side stand those who believe that the most precious resource of the Philippines is its people, and who object to the use of what some call “human pesticides” to control the Filipino population. Read more…
A US judge granted political asylum to a German homeschooling family that is in danger of losing their children to the state.
Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, of Memphis, Tennessee, said: “We can’t expect every country to follow our constitution. The world might be a better place if it did. However, the rights being violated here are basic human rights that no country has a right to violate.” He observed: “Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution… therefore, they are eligible for asylum…” Read more…
I’m seeing good articles like these more and more. Surely the citizens of these countries must know what’s up. But why aren’t they doing anything about it? Perhaps it’s the “someone else will solve the problem. I don’t have to do anything” mentality.
Steven Malanga
In Kamikatsu, on the Japanese island of Shikoku, officials have set up an agricultural cooperative whose members log on to computers daily to check the fluctuating prices of the produce that they grow. Then they go out and pick whatever is fetching the best price that day. Unusual, yes, but what’s truly surprising about this cooperative is the average age of its members: 70. In a country where lots of folks retire at 60, Kamikatsu’s residents are working well into their senior years—and they’re doing so not only to buoy retirement earnings but also to energize the local economy. With nearly half of the town’s residents 65 and older, the government realized that there simply wasn’t enough of a traditional workforce available to build or staff most typical industries. Read more…
Carolyn Moynihan, Mercatornet.com
Here is something for the inaugural European Union president, Herman van Rompuy, to put his stamp on: the revival of the European family. The EU is very active in telling member states what to do about certain social issues — for example, condemning a recent Lithuanian law which prohibits promotion of “homosexual, bisexual, polygamous relations” among children under the age of 18 — but it is dragging its feet on the most important social issue of all: the protection and support of the family. Read more…
Michael Cook, Mercatornet.com
The message is finally getting through: the population bomb has fizzled out and fertility is falling nearly everywhere in the world.
Sometime in the next few years (if it hasn’t happened already) the world will reach a milestone: half of humanity will be having only enough children to replace itself. That is, the fertility rate of half the world will be 2.1 or below. This is the “replacement level of fertility”, the magic number that causes a country’s population to slow down and eventually to stabilise… The move to replacement-level fertility is one of the most dramatic social changes in history. 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…
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…
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