Demographic Decline: Greece Faces Alarming Population Collapse

Sep 13, 2024 | Empty villages, disillusioned young workers, and government officials scrambling for solutions: this is the stark reality Euronews uncovered in Greece, where the country is bracing for a major population collapse fuelled by plummeting numbers of births, mass emigration, and low fertility rates.

Read more here.

Conservative Calls for Women to Have More Babies Hide Pernicious Motives

THE OBSERVER: Boosting birthrates to protect racial identity has a long and shameful history

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni whose policies protecting ‘traditional families’ variously demonise immigrants and LGBTQ communities. Photograph: Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
I’ve done my bit by having six children, so now you do yours”, Jacob Rees-Mogg demanded of GB News viewers recently. Not so long ago, politicians were panicking about overpopulation. Now many worry that there are – or will be – too few people in the world. “There is one critical outcome that liberal individualism has completely failed to deliver and that is babies,” one of the rising stars of the Tory party, MP Miriam Cates, told the National Conservatism conference in May.

The resurgence of such natalism has been provoked by falling birthrates across the globe. In 1950, according to a study in the Lancet, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime. By 2017, that had fallen to 2.4 and is predicted to fall below 1.7 by 2100. England and Wales are almost at that figure now, the birthrate having dropped from 2.9 in 1964 to 1.61 in 2021, marking, in Cates’ view, a “population collapse”. » | Kenan Malik | Sunday, August 6, 2023

It is indeed true that the birthrate needs to go up significantly. But how are we going to achieve this in the West with current values? For women to give birth to more children, we need to return to the values of yesteryear, maybe the 50s – a time in which women, wives, wanted, even expected to stay at home to be good housewives and mothers. To achieve that state of affairs again, much would have to change, not least attitudes. It is hard to imagine how the West can ever expect to increase birthrates significantly when most women insist on going out to work, either because of necessity or out of choice. There was a lot to be said for the status quo ante. Not only did it feed the needs of commerce and industry without the need for droves of immigrants, but it was also conducive to cohesive communities. It is an undeniable fact that we have lost much that was good in our quest for modernity. – © Mark Alexander

India Overtakes China to Become World’s Most Populous Country

THE GUARDIAN: Milestone marks the first time since 1950 that China has dropped to second place in global population ranks

India has overtaken China as the world’s most populous country, according to UN population estimates, the most significant shift in global demographics since records began.

According to the UN’s projections, which are calculated through a variety of factors including census data and birth and death rates, India now has a population of 1,425,775,850, surpassing China for the first time.

It is also the first time since 1950, when the UN first began keeping global population records, that China has been knocked off the top spot.

China’s population decline follows decades of strict laws to bring the country’s booming birthrate under control, including the introduction of a one-child policy in the 1980s. This included fines for having extra children, forced abortions and sterilisations. While initially highly effective in controlling the population, these policies became a victim of their own success, and the country is now grappling with an ageing population in steep decline, which could have severe economic implications.

Part of the problem is that because of a traditional preference for boys, the one-child policy led to a massive gender imbalance. Men now outnumber women by about 32 million. “How can the country now shore up birth rates, with millions of missing women?” asks Mei Fong, the author of One Child, a book about the impact of the policy. » | Hannah Ellis-Petersen | South Asia correspondent | Monday, April 24, 2023

Long Slide Looms for World Population, with Sweeping Ramifications

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Fewer babies’ cries. More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom.

All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.

Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.

Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time. » | Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun | Saturday, May 22, 2021

Population Studies: France's 'Ethnic Data' Taboo

Census 2011: Population Surges by 3.7 Million in a Decade

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The population of England and Wales has undergone its biggest surge since records began after a decade of mass immigration and a baby boom, according to the 2011 census.

Figures published by the Office for National Statistics show that the population of England and Wales grew by 7.1 per cent to 56.1 million, twice the rate recorded in the previous decade.

When the census results for Northern Ireland and an estimate for Scotland are taken into account the UK population stands at around 63.1 million, up four million in the past decade; almost equivalent to adding the entire city of Manchester each year.

More than half the population growth has been driven by immigration, with two thirds of immigrants coming from non-EU countries. » | John Bingham, Social Affairs Editor | Monday, July 16, 2012

My comment:

Thank you, Tony Blair et al. You've screwed up royally. – © Mark

This comment is also to be found here.

La population du Japon va chuter d'un tiers sur 50 ans
LA PRESSE: La population du Japon va chuter de 32,3% entre 2010 et 2060 compte tenu de la dénatalité, et les personnes âgées de plus de 65 ans représenteront alors près de 40% du total, une perspective inquiétante pour le pays et son régime de protection sociale, selon une nouvelle étude publique.

En 2060, le Japon ne comptera plus que 86,74 millions d'habitants, contre 128,06 millions recensés en 2010, le passage sous la barre symbolique des 100 millions devant se produire en 2048, d'après les chiffres actualisés publiés lundi par l'Institut national de la protection sociale et des problèmes démographiques. » | Agence France-Presse | lundi 30 janvier 2012

E-petition Demands Drastic Action to Stop Britain's Population Hitting 'Unsustainable' 70million
MAIL ONLINE: A campaign was launched yesterday for drastic action to prevent Britain’s population reaching an ‘unsustainable’ 70million.

The ‘e-petition’ calls on David Cameron to clamp down on immigration, which is seen as the major factor behind the rising numbers.

Organisers Migration Watch are seeking the 100,000 signatures needed to force a Parliamentary debate on the issue.

National statisticians predict the UK will be home to 70million people within just 16 years.

According to Migration Watch, two thirds of the increase will be the result of future immigration. Sir Andrew Green, who chairs the group, said: ‘Politicians need reminding that this is an issue that is consistently one of the top concerns of voters and it must be addressed.’ » | James Slack | Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Sign the petition here

UAE Population Up by 65% in Four Years
KHALEEJ TIMES ONLINE: The UAE’s population has grown exponentially to 8.26 million in mid-2010, a growth of 64.5% in four years, as strong economic growth attracted workers from all over the world.

According to latest population estimates put out by the National Bureau of Statistics on last Thursday, the population of Emiratis have increased by 96,833 to 947,997, or 11.47 per cent, in the last four years.

The bureau has based its estimates on administrative records of the Ministry of Interior and data on births and deaths obtained from the Ministry of Health.

Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in terms of land mass, has the biggest population of 404,546, or 42 per cent, of the UAE nationals also. » | Saturday, April 02, 2011

The Population Crash
THE GUARDIAN: Across Europe, we are having fewer babies. In many places, such as the deserted town of Hoyerswerda in east Germany, the falling birth rate is already taking its toll

Hoyerswerda, a town two hours beyond Dresden close to the Polish ­border, has lost half its population in the last 20 years. It is an ­ageing ghost town. The young and those with qualifications have left – young women especially. And those that remain have given up having babies. Hoyerswerda (known to its citizens as Hoy Woy) seems a town without a purpose, in a corner of Europe without a future.

On the windswept roof of the Lausitz Tower, the town's only landmark, I meet Felix Ringel. A young German anthropologist studying at Cambridge University, he has passed up chances taken by his friends to ­investigate the rituals of Amazon tribes or Mongolian peasants. As we survey the empty plots of fenced scrub below, he explains that the underbelly of his own country seemed weirder and far less studied than those exotic worlds.

In its heyday in the 60s, Hoyerswerda was a model community in communist East Germany, a brave new world attracting migrants from all over the country. They dug brown coal from huge open-cast mines on the plain around the town. There was good money and two free bottles of brandy a month. But the fall of the Berlin Wall changed all that. It was here in 1989, in the towns and cities of Saxony, that the people of the east started moving west to ­capitalism and freedom. At the head of the queue were the young, ­especially young women.

Under communism, East ­German women worked more, and were ­often better educated, than the more conservative western hausfrau. But when their jobs disappeared in the early 90s, hundreds of thousands of them, encouraged by their ­mothers, took their school diplomas and CVs and headed west to cities such as ­Heidelberg. The boys, however, seeing their fathers out of work, often just gave up. In adulthood, they form a rump of ill-educated, alienated, ­often unemployable men, most of them ­unattractive mates – a further factor in the departure of young women.

Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and ­Development, calls it a "male ­emergency" – but this is not just an emergency for men. The former ­people's republic is staring into a ­demographic abyss, because its ­citizens don't want babies any more. >>> Fred Pearce | Monday, February 01, 2010

GUARDIAN DATA BLOG: Nine billion people by 2050? : The world's population is growing at a startling rate. These figures show the number of people in each country on the globe >>>

UK Population Must Fall to 30m, Says Porritt
THE SUNDAY TIMES: JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

Porritt said: “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.

“Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”

Population growth is one of the most politically sensitive environmental problems. The issues it raises, including religion, culture and immigration policy, have proved too toxic for most green groups. >>> Jonathan Leake and Brendan Montague | Sunday, March 22, 2009