More and more New Zealanders are looking to adopt babies from overseas, largely due to falling domestic adoption opportunities. Countries that New Zealanders are adopting foreign babies from include Russia, Cambodia, India, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and Tonga. While for some couples adopting from a foreign country is a choice (and a good one), for many it is something they look to only after years of being on the domestic adoption waiting list.
The New Zealand Herald reports that, according to Child Youth and Family, the number of domestic adoptions has fallen 40 per cent in the last five years. Of the women who gave birth outside of marriage in New Zealand in the post-war decades, most found adoptive parents for their babies: In 1971, for example, the peak year for adoptions, 3,976 babies were adopted out by young…
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Along with the hoopla that has inevitably broken out in the media with the UN’s population estimation of the world’s population in 2100 (over 10 billion) there has been little analysis of how the UN has also predicted that the world population is also growing older. According to the UN’s 2009 edition of the World Population Document, the ageing of the worlds’ population is “unprecedented…pervasive…profound…enduring”.
By 2045 there will be more people above the age of 60 then there will be under the age 15 in the world (we in the enlightened developed world passed that milestone thirteen years ago).
The reductions of fertility worldwide mean that population ageing “is affecting nearly all the countries in the world”. According to the UN, this has a “direct bearing on both the intergenerational and intragenerational equity and solidarity…
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We’ve alluded to the UN’s latest population predictions a couple of times already in the last couple of weeks here on Mercatornet. Our editor, Michael Cook, wrote a great article on population decline in which he mentioned the problems with the UN’s predictions and linked to Fred Pearce’s fairly scathing analysis of the UN’s models.
The major problem with the UN’s approach is that it has revised upwards the projected growth rates of the world from its predictions in 2008 despite the fact that the current actual world population and growth rates are lower than that predicted two years ago. So in effect the UN has predicted that the future growth rates will be higher than it predicted at a time when the actual growth rate and population was higher. The trend is down, expect in the…
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The pension’s minister in Britain is trying to convince the nation that 59 is not “old”. The move comes after a large-scale European study found that Britons on average believe that old age starts earlier than most other nationalities in Europe do. Only the Turks view old age as starting earlier - at 55. The Greeks are the most optimistic, holding that you are not old until you turn 68.
The UK News reports that the study of attitudes to age in 28 European countries found that Norway, Sweden, Holland, France, Russia, Slovenia, Poland, Belgium and Denmark view old age as starting between 60 and 65. The researchers also found that people in Britain stop being described as “young” at 35. However, Germans are considered young until they reach 43, and Cypriots until 51.
Bombs across the border
10 Feb 2012
The US makes a strong case that its military interventions in Pakistan are just and legal. Whether they’re good is…
12:55:29 PM
