Dear Colleague:

A new report by the U.S. Census Bureau warns that the rate of world
population growth is continuing to fall. Mortality rates increase.
Fertility rates continue to fall. Population collapse is just around the
corner.

Unfortunately, USAID's Bureau for Global Health has contributed largely to
sections of this report. In the face of this looming population crisis,
USAID calls for more population control.

Isn't it time to call off the dogs?

Steven Mosher
President


PRI Weekly Briefing
8 April 2004
Vol. 6 / No. 14


USAID Unleashes More Population Control

Even though the rate of world population growth is in rapid decline, and
mortality rates throughout the developing world are at an all-time high,
USAID's contribution to a new report on global population is this: send
more family planning.

The rate of the world's overall population growth peaked in 1989-90, with
the world's population growing by 87 million people, then began to
decline. In 2002, the world's overall population grew by 74 million, 13
million less than the peak year. It is expected that this slowdown in the
world's overall population growth will continue into the foreseeable
future.(1)

According to a new report by the U.S. Census Bureau, "The slowdown in the
growth of the world's population can be traced primarily to declines in
fertility." In 2002, the bureau points out, "the world's women, on
average, were giving birth to 2.6 children over their lifetime,"(2) or
roughly half of the world's total fertility rate in 1950.(3)

Alarmingly, the bureau predicts that "the level of fertility for the world
as a whole will drop below replacement level by 2050."(4)

The report notes that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has contributed to the decline
in world's population growth. Twenty million people worldwide have died of
AIDS. "Barring some major breakthrough," the forty million people
worldwide who are now living with HIV are expected to die within the next
10 years. Over 30 percent of all children born to HIV infected mothers in
Sub-Saharan Africa will be HIV positive.(5) High rates of mortality,
combined with lower levels of fertility, will lower the average life
expectancy at birth to around 30 years by 2010, a level not seen since the
beginning of the 20th century.

Despite this coming demise of the human species, the bureau claims that
over 100 million women in the world today have an "unmet need" for
contraception.(6) How can the U.S. Census Bureau make this claim, given
the greater unmet need for HIV/AIDS prevention and basic life-saving aid?
The answer to this is that the Bureau for Global Health of the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID) has contributed
largely to this report, one quarter of which includes an assessment of
contraceptive prevalence in the developing world.

Many developed countries in the world today are already facing severe
economic and societal challenges because of under-population. And many
developing nations will likely never develop before absolute population
decline strikes hard, due to pressures to increase contraceptive use and
lower fertility in the face of record-high mortality rates. By 2050, the
bureau predicts, the global fertility rate will be below replacement.(7)

When this happens, population collapse is imminent. Social and economic
collapse will follow.

As birth rates fall into the cellar, it's important for the U.S.
government to stop spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each
year on programs designed to lower the number of babies born even further.
The U.S. government must abandon its thirty-year effort to contracept and
sterilize the world.  USAID's Office of Population must be shut down. And
all population monies must be shifted to pro-natal programs. Otherwise the
looming threat of global depopulation will become a devastating reality.

It's time for the population control movement to call off the dogs. The
population explosion it predicted never happened. The anti-natalists
should pack up their tents and go home.


ENDNOTES
 
1. U.S. Census Bureau, "Global Population Profile: 2002," March 2004.
2. Ibid.
3. U.N. Population Division, World Population Prospects, The 2000
Revision.
4. U.S. Census Bureau.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.


 
© 2004 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted.
Redistribute widely. Credit required.

_________
If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to PRI, please go to
https://pop.org/donate.cfm. All donations (of any size) are welcomed and
appreciated.

_________
To subscribe to the Weekly Briefing, send an email to: Mail to:
JOIN-PRI@Pluto.Sparklist.com or email pri@pop.org and say "Add me to your
Weekly Briefing."

__________
The Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights
abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending
counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of
"overpopulation."
 
PRI
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, VA 22630
USA
 
Phone: (540) 622-5240 Fax: (540) 622-2728
Email: vince@pop.org
Media Contact: Vince Criste
(540) 622-5240, ext. 206