The dramatic decrease in birth rates, which was first witnessed in post-war Europe, is now a worldwide phenomenon. Countries like Japan and Poland have experienced substantial population shrinkage in recent years, with Japan’s numbers dropping by almost a million just in the last year, and Poland experiencing a dip of around 130,000. China, a nation recognized for having the world’s largest population for centuries, is also headed downwards. The notorious one-child policy has left a lasting, harmful impact, pushing the country into a precipitous decline.
There’s more to the situation than meets the eye in China, as some argue that the official population figure of 1.44 billion is overstated, possibly by up to 130 million. Meanwhile, India, known as the country with the second-largest population, has not only closed this gap but has now exceeded China. However, this growth in population is projected to be short-lived. Findings from 2021 revealed that an average Indian woman is expected to give birth to just two children in her lifetime, which is lower than the needed reproduction rate of about 2.25 to maintain the current population.
The same narrative of plummeting birthrates is resonating across Latin America, Middle East and even Africa. Dealing with such a steep population drop hasn’t been experienced on a global scale since the Black Death in the 16th century. In the case of Tunisian women, current total fertility is alarming, estimated at merely 1.93.
Unfortunately, this grim development in population trend is not an occasion for celebration. For the first time in approximately 60,000 years of human existence, we’re not producing enough offspring to replace ourselves. Life expectancy increasing means population will continue to expand until the mid-century, but this population momentum is bound to grind to a halt eventually.
When this inevitable halt occurs, mankind will have hit another unfortunate milestone. Despite a deadly plague able to generate mass death, high birth rates in the past facilitated a recovery for the global population. But this time, the situation could be drastically different, and we might not be so lucky.
Influence factors like marriage rates, education levels, and urbanization are all playing a significant role in decreasing fertility rates. It might come as a surprise that we are in a global birth dearth. This can be attributed to influential international organizations like the UN Population Fund and the World Bank, which have kept this information largely hidden.
These agencies date back to times of ‘overpopulation’ panic in the 1960s and have been implicated in inflating birth numbers in some countries and population figures in others. A prime example is the UN’s recent estimates in its World Population Prospects report, where they state that 705,000 babies were born in Colombia last year, a figure significantly higher than the 510,000 reported by Colombia’s own government. This is not a case of slight miscalculations.
The UN also errs in its claim of Indian women averaging 2.25 children. This misconstrues the national statistics, which record numbers believably below 2.0. Such figures, padded and manipulated as they are, allow the UN to maintain that the global average fertility rate is at 2.25, which is above replacement. Quite comically and absurdly, even the replacement rate reported by the UN is inaccurate, standing at 2.1 children per woman.
Other consequences of this inaccuracy plague countries like China, India, and others in Asia where sex-selection abortions skew the gender ratio towards males. With tens of millions of unborn girls missing in these countries, the average births required increase to about 2.2 or 2.3. The UN’s overestimation of population numbers is eerily analogous to the blatant exaggeration of employment statistics by the Biden-Harris administration for political and financial gains.
The reality in India, moreover, is probably even more dire than we can discern from the nebulous official reports. Addressing this issue honestly might be a stepping stone towards a practical solution. However, no matter how disastrously misleading these fabricated numbers are, they continue to feed a multi-billion-dollar industry driven by ‘population explosion’ fears.
This movement aiming to control population growth isn’t prepared to cease its efforts, regardless of its catastrophic contribution to our demographic decline. Public apprehension is still stoked by a surge in population that doesn’t exist anymore. The truth we must accept, rather than deny, is that we’re standing on the brink of a global population implosion.
The time has come to terminate the battle against an implausible population explosion. Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and author of ‘The Devil and Communist China’ (Tan Books), is one of the many voices calling for an end to this damaging, fear-mongering campaign.