Latest UN Documents Predict Significant Population Decline

by Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
December 24, 2003

New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- The newest release by the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) paints a bleak future for the human race, with one projection showing the population of the world spiraling downward from the current 6.3 billion to 2.3 billion by 2300.

However, one leading pro-life group says the media's attention is focused more on wild predictions and less on the projection that makes the most sense.

The Population Research Institute has called the UNPD's "low variant" projection, which predicts a drastic decrease in the world's population, "historically the most accurate."

Among the other projections is the UNPD's "medium variant," which projects a maximum population of 9.1 billion in 2100 and then a stabilization in size. While considerably smaller than previous long-term projections of 10 or 12 billion world inhabitants, it relies on assumptions about the growth rate that PRI calls "rosy" and "wildly optimistic."

It is this projection, not the more historically accurate one, that is "the focus of most of the press coverage" according to PRI.

The UNPD assumed, in the medium variant projection, that global fertility rates will bottom out at 1.85 children per woman.

"[The figure of] 1.85 children per woman represents a floor value below which the total fertility of high and medium-fertility countries is not allowed to drop before 2050," the report says.

However, fertility rates can be and are lower.

In Europe, for instance, the fertility rate of Europe in 2000 was only 1.31, a drastic drop from 2.66 in 1950.

Since a fertility rate of 2 or higher is necessary to replace the loss of human life, the low rates paint an alarming picture.

"After fertility rates fall below replacement, there is no necessary cause that drives them up towards replacement," Scott Weinberg of PRI told LifeNews.com "In fact, once they drop, they remain low."

UNPD's report inexplicably predicts that in the next 50 years fertility rates will increase drastically, despite the 50 year downward trend that already exists.

Weinberg points to Italy as an example. 

"[In Italy] fertility has declined and only declined from 2.3 in 1950 to 1.2 today," said Weinberg. "The UNPD rewrites history, by increasing the high variant fertility rate in 2000 to 1.23, then arbitrarily pulls it upwards to 2.1 in 2050."

As for the 1.85 global fertility rate "floor," PRI stated, "No rationale is given for this limitation."

"Fertility rates in nature, of course, do not rise or fall simply because a demographic model so dictates," said a PRI weekly briefing. "In the real world, as opposed to the reified world of modeling, Europe's fertility rates continue to crash.

That leads pro-life groups to say that the international community's focus should be less on making abortion legal in every country and more on helping pregnant mothers find adequate medical care and pregnancy resources.

"Our long-term problem is not too many children, but too few children," concludes PRI. "And population control organizations are only making this problem worse, much worse."

Related web sites:
Population Research Institute - http://www.pop.org