While President Obama was putting the finishing touches to a speech addressed to Muslims and delivered at an Egyptian university yesterday, an Egyptian doctor was the subject of a speech and an award at a United Nations Population Fund ceremony in New York (June 1). UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Dr Mahmoud Fathalla richly deserved the prize for making “a major impact in the field of family planning, reproductive rights and ending maternal deaths.”

Dr Fathalla (pictured here at last year's Women Deliver conference) is a former advisor to both the World health organisation and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and in 1974, established the Egyptian Fertility Care Society, one of the first family planning organizations in the Arab world, according to a UN press release. One can see why he would, ahem, appeal to UNFPA, whose mission seems to be to reduce world fertility.

Dr Fathalla shared the honours with Movimiento Comunal Nicaragüense (MCN), created in 1978 to boost living conditions in Nicaragua through social and community development, gender equality and environmental protection.

Drawing inspiration from the work of the award winners, Mr. Ban called for “a world where women do not die needlessly in childbirth; where girls get the education they deserve; where young people are protected from HIV; and where couples can decide how many children to have.”

The last item is somewhat ironic because, as C-FAM -- a group which takes a close interest in the reproductive health scene -- points out, UNFPA once gave the award in question to Qian Xinzhong, “who, as minister of China’s State Family Planning Commission was responsible for overseeing China’s draconian one-child policy, which included forced abortion and mandatory sterilization.”

C-FAM reports:

In his acceptance speech for the award, Dr. Mahmoud Fathalla called the “powerlessness” of women a “serious health hazard” and lamented how frequently, women were “coerced into motherhood by denying them not only the power and means to control and regulate their fertility but also by denying them choices in life apart from childbearing and childrearing.”

Unfortunately, he does not have a great deal of faith in contraception to control fertility. According to C-FAM, in a 2005 speech he stated:

“Contraception may decrease the need for abortion, but contraception will never eliminate the need for abortion…[W]ith the current levels of use effectiveness of contraceptive methods there is a very simple mathematical model that every year there will be between 10 and 20 million unwanted pregnancies among contraceptive users.” Fathalla concluded, “The real social choice is not between abortion and no abortion, but will for practical purpose be to have it under the law or against the law, to have it safe or to have it unsafe.”

With the UN still mesmerised by fertility control, any means is acceptable.

 

How much can governments do to boost birth rates and avoid population ageing? A lot of research is going into encouraging higher fertility, but demographers are still perplexed. In the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2008, John Bongaarts, who has worked with the Population Council in New York for 30 years and is one of the world’s most respected demographers, tackles the question. And his answer is: not much.

In most countries, there is a gap of about 0.8 to 0.9 births between the number of children that women have and the number that they want to have. Economic factors account for perhaps 0.2 or 0.3 births per woman. So creating ideal economic circumstances will not achieve a miraculous increase in fertility. Furthermore, no government policy will eliminate all economic obstacles, so the increase which can be achieved is very small indeed.

Social obstacles to fertility also exist. However, governments are reluctant to interfere with women’s lifestyles. Japan and Singapore have attempted to raise marriage rates amongst young women, but they have had very little success. Biological obstacles to fertility seem to be increasing because women are marrying at a later age and are then finding it difficult to conceive. So Bongaarts feels that IVF could play a role in increasing fertility.

What Bongaarts highlights is what he calls "tempo changes", or decreasing the age at which women bear children. This accounts for about 0.25 births per woman. He says "if a country could manage to turn around an upward trend of 0.1 years per year in the mean age at childbearing and initiate a slow decline of just 0.1 year per year, the period TFR [total fertility rate] would increase by 20 per cent." Furthermore, childbearing at a younger age decreases the biological obstacles, as well. His colleagues are excited about this idea, too – but he fails to make any practical suggestions about how to make it happen.

So, if governments want to increase birthrates, the number of factors becomes bewilderingly large:

"A comprehensive pronatalist policy should focus on all factors that cause actual fertility to be lower than the ideal level, not just economic ones. This means going beyond conventional economic measures that reduce the costs of childbearing and considering efforts to reduce biological and perhaps even social obstacles to childbearing. In addition, policies aimed at reducing or reversing the tempo distortion can have a substantial impact without requiring significant changes in behaviour."

This all sounds optimistic but in the end Bongaarts acknowledges that it is basically just academic theorising:

"It appears that with a comprehensive policy and a substantial commitment of resources, fertility can be raised by a few tenths of a birth per woman above the level that would prevail without these policies. Effective tempo policies could result in even larger effects in the short run. Such effects would bring about a substantial reduction in the rise of the old-age dependency ratio by 2050, but would fall well short of halting population ageing. Nevertheless, the challenges posed by population ageing are so critical and so difficult to address that any step in the right direction is beneficial."

In other words, using every tool available, governments may be able to increase the number of children being born by a bit – but just a little bit. And nothing they do will stop population ageing.

Talk of the Zionist-Bolshevik-Masonic-Wall Street conspiracy to take over the world has been muted for the past few years, thank goodness. But Bill Gates & Co seem to be stoking the fires again. According to the London Sunday Times some of America’s best-known billionaires met secretly in New York on May 5 to discuss ways to fix the world through philanthropy. The little tete-a-tete, nicknamed “The Good Club” included David Rockefeller Jr, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey. It took place at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize laureate and president of Rockefeller University.

Each participant was given 15 minutes to discuss his or her favourite cause, such as supervision of overseas aid spending, setting up rural schools or water systems in developing countries. Bill Gates apparently wanted an “umbrella” as a focus for their efforts. And this, it seems, was a consensus that “population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat”. The idea on the table was to join forces “to overcome political and religious obstacles to change”. (Hmmm. Wonder who those are!)

The planet’s over-populated future, the Times was told by an anonymous source, is “something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers.”

The meeting was so secret that some of the billionaires’ aides were told that they were attending a security briefing. “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” the Times was told.

This was a bit, um , rich, thought quite a few observers. Here at MercatorNet, Bill Muehlenberg fulminated:

 

‘So how exactly does our alternative world government intend to "overcome political and religious obstacles"? Will Bill Gates apply the ruthless monopolistic business strategies he perfected at Microsoft to reduce the population of developing countries? What pressure will the world’s richest man apply to his opponents to persuade them to follow Netscape into oblivion?’

 

And the producer of the documentary Demographic Winter, Barry McLerran, said that the billionaires didn’t know what they were talking about:

 

"Gates forgot to mention -- or perhaps he doesn't know -- that birth rates have declined by more than 50% since 1979. In most of the developed world, fertility is well below replacement level... Wherever the world's population caps, with rapidly falling birth rates, it will begin declining shortly thereafter -- perhaps as early as 2030, according to the United Nations Population Division. Instead of over-population, the crisis that confronts us in this century will be how to keep economies and nations going in the face of the coming de-population."

"If the 'Good Club' really wants to do good, instead of adding fuel to the fire, it will consider the reality of declining birth rates and their impact on humanity in this century. Then perhaps they'll begin to realize that people are the one irreplaceable resource."

Brazil has joined the zero population growth club. Official statistics show that its fertility rate plummeted to 1.9 children per woman in 2007. This was even lower than previous rates estimated by the UN and the US Census Bureau. Brazil’s long-term fertility rate is now lower than the United States (2.1) and even than France (2.0).

The statisticians project that the birth rate in Latin America’s largest country will continue to move downwards. It has fallen from 5.3 children per woman in 1970 to 2.8 in 1990, and a projected 1.8 by 2010. The rate levels off at 1.5 children per woman by 2030.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, this sharp decline has major implications for the region's future population size, and signals significant population aging:

Brazil's population, nearly 190 million in 2008... is projected to reach 216.4 million by 2030, and then slip to 215.3 million by 2050. While the total population is projected to decline slightly between 2030 and 2050, for example, the number of Brazilians ages 65 or older is expected to grow by 70 percent.

Here is concise summary of the gloomy future forecast by some demographers:

“Within the next quarter century true depopulation — a persistent long-run excess of deaths over births — will manifest itself in nearly all the countries of Europe and in those non-European countries to which Western civilisation has spread. The present stream of concern over eventual depopulation—concern evident in the many European works dealing with depopulation, in the depopulationist inquiries being made in countries such as England and Sweden, and in the anti-depopulation measures already put into effect in certain countries—will assume the proportions of a deluge. The growth of alarm at depopulation in various countries will proceed along the lines of a rather definite and somewhat ‘naturally evolving’ pattern and will be accompanied by the enactment of a sequence of ineffectual measures designed to stem the decline in fertility.”

If this seems like conventional wisdom to you, it is. Or rather it was – because these are the words of Joseph Spengler, president-to-be of the Population Association of America, writing in 1938. And what happened? Ten years later came the baby boom and worries about demographic stagnation disappeared.

Writing in the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2008, William P. Butz, of the Population Reference Bureau, in Washington DC, uses Spengler’s mistake to declare that he is currently an agnostic about the demographic future of Europe. Bleak it may seem at the moment, but it is very difficult to predict with any certainty what will happen in the next 50 years:

Fertility in Europe is as likely to rise over the next ten years as it is to stay low or fall further. I argue that we do not know what will happen, that we do not know enough, in fact, to project one future over another.

And the conclusion that he draws is that governments should only choose pro-natalist policies which do not harm couples or society. They should be justified on grounds other than impending demographic collapse.

Here is something you don’t read every day, not by a long shot: an official of Planned Parenthood pleading with his countrymen and women to have MORE children. He calls upon them to prevent abortion, to promote marriage and to encourage young people to marry and have children:

"Religious groups need to advocate respect for life, abortion prevention and positive values on marriage and parenthood, encouraging the younger generation to form families and have children."

We are quoting the president of the Planned Population Federation of Korea, Choi Seon-jeong, writing in the JoongAng Daily. In 2008, South Korea had the lowest birth rate in the world, after Hong Kong – 1.18. With the world economic crisis, he expects the figure to drop even further. So Mr Choi is desperate to combat a "national crisis of super-low fertility", or Korea will disappear.

"If the trend continues – he writes -- the population will plunge to one-third by 2100, and the Korean children who are born today will be the first generation to witness the population cut in half."

Mr Choi argues that Korean women want to have children but their society is skewed against it. Couples simply cannot afford to have children, he says.

"We are now living in an environment where people cannot afford to have more children even if they want to. Our private education expenses are some of the highest in the world, and the cost of education has made having two or more children a luxury. Working mothers have to be prepared to lose their jobs unless they return to work shortly after giving birth, usually within three months."

The Planned Population Federation of Korea is the local affiliate of  the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Is this the message that the world body will be sending around in the future --  plan your family: have more kids! ~ JoongAng Daily, May 22

Australia is an immense country, but most of it is arid desert or semi-desert and the population clings to the coast. As an Australian poet said, "It has a wet rim where the people clot / Like mud". So it would be difficult to support a huge population. However, enthusiasts for "sustainable development" think that its meagre 21 million are already far too many for its fragile ecology. The national president of Sustainable Population Australia recently argued that the country needed a one-child policy to reduce the population from 21 million souls to just 7 million.

Writing in the Melbourne Age, Chris Berg, the editor of the IPA Review, had an original criticism of this familiar tune.

But we could spend all day debating the impact of population on the environment. I'm more concerned about another thing: can you imagine how excruciatingly boring Australia would be with only 7 million people?

Last week's Sunday Age reported that a large proportion of "tree-changers" regretted their decision to move from the suburbs to the quieter countryside. Shockingly, in remote and regional Victoria there are fewer and less varied jobs available, fewer services and less commercial activity than in the cities.

An Australia with just 7 million people would be like a mandatory tree-change for everybody, with those who survived the great population decline skulking about the ruins of this once-busy nation.

Australia already suffers because of its small population. We have a small audience for culture. We have a small market for goods and services, and a small base to produce them from. If it weren't for the fact that we can trade stuff with other countries, it would hardly be worth having an Australia at all.

Pretty much everything interesting and exciting about the world is the direct result of human action. Fewer people would mean fewer people doing cool stuff. How would life be without basil pesto, the British version of The Office, single malt whisky, SuperTed or Facebook? Nasty and brutish, sure, but agonisingly long.

And let's face it — whatever meaning has been imposed on the environment has been imposed by people. So when deep greens exalt nature as morally superior to humanity, it comes across as just a little bit stupid. When the chips are down, surely our loyalty lies with the human race.

While some look to demographics to determine the future state of their nations, the needs of the workforce, the location of schools, others use it to sell video games. According to a website called Gamasutra: The Art and Business of Making Video Games, Sony wants to catch up to rival Nintendo by marketing its PSP (Play Station Portable) to the 8 to 15 year-old demographic in addition to it’s core audience of 16 to 24 year-olds says product manager Claire Backhouse.

“PSP is going for a younger market, which isn’t something we’ve really done before,” she said. “Our heartland is 16-24-year-old men and always will be — they won’t be neglected in the slightest. But the summer’s game releases, such as Harry Potter and Petz, as well as the launch of the new colors, are certainly appealing to an 8-15-year-old audience.”

There you have it, selling to young kids with video games, new colours, and a social networking site. Truly science at its best.

It appears Michael Cook isn’t alone in paying attention to Russian demographic trends. The Daily Telegraph in London is hosting an online supplement on Russia from Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Writer Sergei Balashov takes on the issue of Russian depopulation, not from a position that this issue will change Mother Russia into a frozen caliphate but that Russia’s declining population will leave few workers to care for the elderly or the young.  

"Even more troubling is that the number of able-bodied adults is declining faster than any other demographic category. This group is expected to absorb the bulk of the losses, declining by 14m by 2025. According to the RBC daily, in 16 years every 1,000 employed Russians are going to be providing for some 800 dependents."

Like many politicians in the West, some Russian politicians evidently think immigration can solve the problem brought about by decades of empty cradles. Yet Balashov cites experts that disagree with this notion. In the end he says, it is, or it should be about the children.

“The public should show more love for children, families with two or more children should get the most favourable treatment in this country,” said Evgeny Yuriev, the president of the ATON Capital Group and an expert on Russia’s demographics. “The government should adopt this attitude and act accordingly. The goal here is to change this mindset.”

Read the whole thing here.

May 5 is Kodomo no Hi, or Children’s Day in Japan – a national holiday. The custom is to fly the carp-shaped koinobori flags, one for each child. But as a recent report from AP points out, each year for the past 28 years there have been fewer and fewer children to enjoy the holiday. Japan has the lowest percentage of children amongst 31 major countries – only 13%, compared to 20% in the United States.

But the number over 65 is currently 22.5% and rising. By about 2020, the percentage of children will fall below 11% and the percentage of elderly to 29%. Low birthrates and high life expectancy are already putting strains on government services, pension programs, and labour supply.

So far, government efforts to boost the birth rate have been utterly unsuccessful. Still, with the fashion for stimulus packages, Prime Minister Taro Aso is pushing for more financial support for child birth and an expansion of neonatal intensive care units. But a loosening of Japanese rigid immigration laws is still not on the cards. To help ease the looming labour shortage, the retirement age is gradually being extended from 60 to 65, and it could reach 70. ~ Miami Herald, May 5