How to Take the Chill Out of Demographic Winter
A speech by Don Feder to the New Generation Church, Riga, Latvia, November Nov. 15, 2007
….In half-a-century or less, Europe will be populated by strangers — who will wander by the continent’s cathedrals, museums, statues and battlefield monuments wondering what it all meant.
This catastrophe in the making can be most clearly seen in Russia. What Lenin, Stalin and Hitler failed to accomplish, the Russian people are doing to themselves. You might call it auto-genocide.
In Russia, the fertility rate is 1.17 (down from 2.4 in 1990, a decline of over 50%). Russia is losing three-quarters of a million people a year. Its current population of 145 million is expected to be reduced by a third by 2050. In Russia today, almost as many children are aborted as are born alive (1.5 million to 1.6 million)….
In terms of population replacement, Europe is going out of business. Of the 10 nations with the lowest fertility rates worldwide, 9 are in Europe. No European nation has anything approaching a replacement-level birthrate.
Overall, the European fertility rate is 1.3. (Remember, a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed just to maintain stability — no growth and no decline). Italy’s fertility rate is 1.2 — meaning that in the not-too-distant future, absent immigration, Italy will lose almost half of its people in every generation.
The average Italian child born today won’t have brothers or sisters. Most also won’t have cousins, aunts or uncles. Demographic winter is a lonely, as well as a chilly, place….
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Update June 7, 2008:
Current total fertility rates (TFRs) for countries in the world – Rank Order. The web page accessible through the preceding link lists the rank order from highest to lowest, with a TFR of about 2.2 indicating a stable population. The TFR required to maintain a given country’s population varies a little from country to country, depending on the life expectancy for the average resident in that country. (Source: CIA World Factbook)
As of June 2008, the CIA World Factbook showed 104 countries (generally the richest and most developed) to have TFRs of less than 2.2. In other words, in those countries the population is in the process of shrinking. (Related Articles at Fathers for Life)
#TakingTheChillOutOfDemographicWinter
See also:
- Divorce causes population decline
- IVF children have right to a father scrapped
- Taken into Custody – by Stephen Baskerville
- Family courts solve divorce applications backlog
- More on feminism’s legacy: Down syndrome increase
- Feminism and the Family
- Demographic winter causes deadly children shortage
- Many elderly – too few children to care for them
- Government keeps grandparents grandchildren apart