In the first quarter of the 21st century global fertility rates plummeted to record lows all over the industrialized world, and this has serious implications for the future. Native populations fell in wealthy countries, and there are not enough young workers to support the entitlement programs that the elderly are counting on. Meanwhile, nations where birth rates are still above replacement level (such as in the Islamic world) are becoming more powerful and will play a more dominant role in world affairs. Despite all of the West's advanced technology, population numbers still matter, a demographic collapse of epic proportions became imminent.[2]
According to data from the United Nations, total world population still continues to rise, but population is declining in all major nations, where fertility rates have fallen below the minimum population replacement rate. Africa is the only continent where the population continues to grow. According to birth rates and without counting immigration flows, population is now falling in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, the United States, and all European nations except Monaco and the Faroe Islands.[3]
In the United State, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession of 2008, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. As of 2023, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population.
Institute for Family Studies senior fellow Brad Wilcox told Fox News Digital that the US may already be seeing the effects:[4]
“ | Below-replacement fertility means closing schools, shrinking college enrollments, fewer workers and consumers, and not enough taxes to pay for entitlements. We’re already seeing low fertility fallout hitting schools and colleges. But it will have big consequences for the economy as well, given that there will be relatively fewer workers and consumers, and less entrepreneurial activity, as the population of young adults in America falls across much of the nation. | ” |
Illegal immigration is the primary reason why the U.S. population has continued to rise. Apprehensions of illegal aliens along the southwest frontier alone surpassed 10,000 on a daily basis, while migrants and smugglers also exploit other borders and ports of entry.[5]
American demography has long been an issue to Joe Biden. In 2021, he declared, "This country is doomed! It is doomed not just because of African Americans, but because by 2040 this country is going to be minority white European! Hear me! Minority white European!"[6]
A quarter of 40-year-olds in the United States have never been married, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center.[7] As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, this marks the highest figure since the data first started being published back in 1900, and a major leap from the 6 percent low of 1980.[8] Young Americans have increasingly opted for "alternative lifestyles".
In 2023 the Pentagon reported that the individual services missed their recruitment goals by a combined total of 41,000 personnel. Military recruiters say Generation Z - those born between 1997 and 2012 generally have a 'low trust in institutions' and have 'decreasingly followed traditional life and career paths.'
The US Army alone lost nearly 10% of its forces since 2020. The Marine Corps are down 5%. Forbes reported that: “In the face of a massive shortage of Navy sailors, America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has downsized, cutting the crew aboard by hundreds of sailors.”[9] The personpower crisis is so severe that the USS Gerald Ford - quite literally the most premiere American surface asset - is operating with hundreds of sailors trimmed from its complement. The Navy can no longer adequately crew its most important vessels.
The cuts appear to be deep and dramatic. In 2023 some 500 to 600 sailors have left the USS Ford and not been replaced. In fact, the USS Ford has shed so many crew members that the ship’s company (core crew members that operate the vessel) is below the Ford-class Carrier Program’s original Acquisition Program Baseline objective of 2,391 billets—a goal set back in 2004 that many observers considered unrealistic. When a highly sophisticated piece of equipment like an aircraft carrier is undermanned, it has immediate long lasting and detrimental effects on everything, from its maintenance to its lifespan. i.e. an understaffed ship will experience a much shorter life span as it will incur far greater mechanical and other problems due to the inability of the small crew to rigorously maintain everything necessary.
As of 2020, the average woman in Italy was only giving birth to 1.24 children over the course of a lifetime.
The number of newborns in Italy has been in steady decline since the 2008 financial crisis, with the average number of children for each woman standing at 1.24 as of 2020 – among the lowest fertility rates in the EU.[10] At the same time, the population is rapidly ageing – the number of centenarians in Italy has tripled over the last 20 years to 22,000 – placing even more pressure on government finances.
Elon Musk publicly encouraged Italian women to start having more children. Between January and June of 2023 there were 3,500 fewer births than in the same period of 2022, according to data from national statistics ISTAT. And in the year 2022, birth rates fell for a 14th consecutive drop by 1.7% to 1.18 for women of Italian nationality, and 1.24 to include new mothers who are immigrants. To address these unprecedented numbers, Meloni set aside around 1 billion euros to combat the declining birth rate in October.[11]
In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman.[12] South Korea actually has the lowest fertility rate in the entire industrialized world, and that rate is expected to keep dropping for at least several more years.
South Korea’s total fertility rate, the number of births from a woman in her lifetime, is now expected to drop from 0.78 in 2022 to 0.65 in 2025, according to the government’s Statistics Korea.
In a worst-case scenario, that rate could go as low 0.59 births per woman in 2026, the agency said.
In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s.[13] In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.[14]
Russia's fertility rate of 1.58 births per woman is one of the lowest fertility rates in the world,[16] with the United States close behind with 1.64 births per woman.[17] Both nations' fertility rates are below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.
Shortly before the pandemic broke out in 2020 Vladimir Putin stated: "Russia's destiny and its historical prospects depend on one thing: how many of us there are and how many of us there will be."
According to a 2022 report of IntelliNews:
“ | The decline in the size of Russia’s population is accelerating, driven by a combination of the arrival of the demographic dip caused by the 1990s and one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
Russia saw a rapid expansion in population during the Soviet era as the country was industrialised and the population moved into the cities. The population rose from circa 100mn in 1945 following WWII to 148.5mn in 1992, after which the economic chaos of that decade both depressed fertility and increased the death rates, especially amongst men. Life expectancy in particular crashed after the economy collapsed in 2009. Now things are even worse. Compared to the peaks of the boom years in the early noughties, fertility rates in Russia have fallen by almost a third and are now even lower than in the mid-1990s, when an average of 9.3 children were born per 100,000 people. While the death rate is growing at the same time, the natural population decline continues to accelerate: 264,300 people per quarter, or 7.3 people per 100,000 of the population – new all-time lows for the entire modern history of the country.[16] |
” |
Demographers estimate Russia will fall from being the 9th most populous country in the world to being the 17th by 2050.[16] And estimates indicate that Russia's population will drop from 2014's 142 million to 128 million by 2050.[16]
According to the CIA's Russophobic mouthpiece, the Jamestown Foundation[18] in a 2022 article entitled Russia’s Demographic Collapse Is Accelerating claimed:
“ | Aleksey Raksha, an independent Russian demographer and perhaps the closest Russian counterpart to the late US expert Murray Feshbach, provides the most comprehensive discussion of these developments. He relies exclusively on the first results of the latest census, which were released earlier this summer (Vedomosti.ru, April 8), and a broader selection of demographic data that Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical arm, has now released (Rosstat.gov.ru, August 2022), making it far harder for his words to be dismissed. The situation he outlines is devastating (Svoboda.org, August 9).
During the first five months of 2022, Russia’s population fell by 430,000, which far exceeded the figure for the same period in 2021 and one that points to another decline of more than one million people for 2022 as a whole. The 2021 figure reflects both the relationship of births and deaths among the permanent population and the size of migration flows. Last year, in-migration partially compensated for the greater number of deaths as compared to births, but this year, it has not. Instead, increased out-migration has contributed to the total population decline. The opening of the country to in-migration after the pandemic may lead to a slight improvement in the second half of 2022, but that will not be enough to compensate for the indigenous decline continuing into 2023 and throughout the coming decade (Osnmedia.ru, July 26).[19] |
” |
In July of 2022, the neocon globalist London Times reported:
“ | Rosstat, the state statistics service, has predicted that Russia’s population could decline by up to 12 million people in the next two decades. The warning was issued before the war in Ukraine, where tens of thousands of young Russian soldiers are thought to have been killed. The Kremlin has tried to plug the demographic hole by offering financial incentives for families to have more than one child and making it easier for foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship.[20] | ” |
Russia also has a shortage of people in their twenties and thirties partly because of upheaval during the collapse of the Soviet Union and partly due to the war in Ukraine.[21]
The journalist Isabelle Khurshudyan's 2020 article In Siberian coal country, signs of Russia’s shrinking population are everywhere. It ‘haunts’ Putin. notes:
“ | A United Nations demographic report last year calculated that the “pessimistic” outlook for Russia is that the population will fall to 124.6 million by 2050 and to 83.7 million by 2100.
Raksha, the demographer, expects a bigger drop next year in another potential consequence of the pandemic. One indicator: Registered marriages this year through July were down 23 percent compared with the same period last year, according to Rosstat. The pandemic made things “unpredictable, and in such situations, people delay birth,” said Raksha, who worked for Rosstat until this summer. Putin’s solution: promising tax breaks for larger families and stipends for those who have kids.[22] |
” |
The CCP and Democrat toady Bloomberg News reported on October 18, 2022:
“ | Plans by Putin’s government had set the goal of starting to reverse the decline in the population in 2022 before growth should resume in 2030. Yet weeks before the mobilization was announced in September, an internal report drafted for a closed-door meeting showed officials were already concluding those targets were unrealistic.
Citing the consequences of the coronavirus and migration outflows, the report instead proposed a revision that envisaged a decrease of 416,700 people in 2030. Should military operations continue in the coming months, as expected, Russia may see less than 1.2 million births next year, the lowest in modern history, according to Igor Efremov, a researcher and specialist in demographics at the Gaidar Institute in Moscow.[23] |
” |
Adam Gwiazda's article Demographic crisis in Russia states:
“ | The state of public health is one of the most extreme aspects of the demographic crisis in Russia. As a result of the AIDS epidemic, alcoholism and the dreadful state of health care, in the years 2005-2015 the mortality rate in Russia was three times higher among men and twice as high among women as in other countries with a similar level of social and economic development. More than half of the deaths of Russians aged 15-54 were caused by alcohol abuse after the collapse of the USSR. It should be noted that even the increase in the income of the Russian population by about 80 per cent in the years 1999-2008 did not result in a decrease in the mortality rate. High Russian mortality is the result not only of “normally” treatable diseases, such as tuberculosis, but also of lifestyle: drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes and AIDS. Every year, 500,000 people die due to alcohol in Russia. This applies to both women and men. The drug problem is also huge, as the prices of drugs are lower than in Western countries.
Russia is also unable to cope with the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and cancer, which are the main cause of death. The problem is not only the lack of sufficient funds for health care (until mid-2005, about 4.2 per cent of GDP was allocated for this purpose, while in rich European countries it was on average 8-10 per cent of GDP), but also the country’s unfavorable social and economic situation, relatively low position of health and a long life on the Russian list of priorities, poverty, lack of responsibility for one’s own health, and bad habits.[25] |
” |
India Today[26] reported on February 27, 2023:
“ | With over 65,000 Russian fighters having been killed in the war in Ukraine and 8 lakh people, mostly fighting-age men, fleeing the country, Russia is said to be staring at a population crisis. Russia might see fewer than 1.2 million births this year if the war in Ukraine continues, according to experts.
By India Today World Desk: Experts warned that Russia might witness a 10 per cent decline in births this calendar year as thousands of Russian soldiers continue to die in the war being waged in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he termed a "special military operation" in Ukraine on February 24 last year. Since then, nearly 65,000 Russian fighters have died in Ukraine and over 100,300 have sustained grievous injuries. As per reports, experts have estimated that Russia may see fewer than 1.2 million births this year if the war rages on in the near future. Approximately, 800,000 people, mainly men of fighting age, have fled Russia since the war began in a bid to avoid active participation in the military offensive, according to a media report... With a ceasefire looking elusive in the foreseeable future, Russia's situation may worsen as it has been recording a growing elderly population.[27] |
” |
In an interview with Rossiya-1 TV aired on February 26, 2023, Russian president Vladimir Putin said,
“ | If we opt for [Russia’s disintegration], I think that the destinies of many peoples of Russia, and first of all the Russian people, of course, may change drastically. I even doubt that such an ethnic group as the Russian people will survive as it is today, with some Muscovites, Uralian and others remaining instead.
They [ the West ] have one goal of liquidating the former Soviet Union and its main part, the Russian Federation. And later, [after liquidating Russia] they will probably admit us to the so-called family of civilized peoples, but only by parts, each part separately. What for? For ordering those parts around and putting under their control.[28] |
” |
The World Bank's article Searching for a New Silver Age in Russia: The Drivers and Impacts of Population Aging states:
“ | Over the next few decades, Russia’s population is expected to age significantly. Some of this aging will be due to the increasing life expectancy, which is a significant achievement. However, this trend, together with low fertility and the retirement of large numbers of people born in the 1950s are expected to reduce the working-age population by as much as 14 percent over the next 35 years.
A decline in Russia’s working-age population will certainly pose serious social and economic challenges – but it can also offer important opportunities. Pessimistic forecasts about the impacts of aging often assume that current behavior and institutions will continue unchanged in a future, older society. For example, since the early 1990s, increases in the working-age population have accounted for about one third of the growth in per capita GDP. Over the next few decades, without changes in individual behavior and government policies, a rise in the dependency ratio could reduce growth by 2 percentage points per year. One important channel is savings, which could plunge if lifecycle-based savings rates remain unchanged as Russia’s population ages. Aging could also substantially increase spending on health care and pensions, leading to protracted deficits that boost today’s debt-to-GDP ratio of 20% of GDP to over 100% by 2050. A more optimistic view is that individuals and firms will adapt to aging, and that policies can promote and speed up this adaptation process.[29] |
” |
An excerpt from the abstract for the 2016 journal article Aging in Russia published in the journal The Gerontologist states:
“ | Russia has always been at an intersection of Western and Eastern cultures, with its dozens of ethnic groups and different religions. The federal structure of the country also encompasses a variety of differences in socioeconomic status across its regions... Social policy and legislation address the needs of older adults by providing social services, support, and protection. The retirement system in Russia enables adults to retire at relatively young ages—55 and 60 years for women and men, respectively—but also to maintain the option of continuing their professional career or re-establishing a career after a “vocation” period. Though in recent years the government has faced a range of political issues, affecting the country’s economy in general, budget funds for support of aging people have been maintained.[30] | ” |
Fortune magazine reported in 2022: "For Putin, who just turned 70, Russian demography has long been an existential issue, and just last year he declared that “saving the people of Russia is our top national priority.” He’s presided over efforts to buy time with costly policies that contributed to a steep gain in longevity and ranged from lump payments for new mothers to mortgage relief for families".[32]
Bne IntelliNews indicated in 2022:
“ | Between 1993 and 2008, Russia’s population saw a considerable decline in its population from 148.37mn to 143.25. However, after Russian President Vladimir Putin took over in 2000 he put demographics at the top of the agenda and launched a comprehensive reform to boost the population, as featured by bne IntelliNews in “Putin’s babies”. The fruits of these reforms began to appear in around 2008 when the population began growing again...
The population increased again to 145.9mn recently; however, the population was expected to peak at the end of 2020 and is projected to start declining again... These problems were already very visible at the end of the 1990s, when demographers became increasingly alarmed at where Russia was heading.[16] |
” |
On December 3, 2022, Fortune magazine stated:
“ | Since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Russia has confronted a continued population slump due to low birth rates coupled with high mortality rates. Throughout his rule, Russian President Vladimir Putin has obsessed over Russia’s shrinking population. Last year, Putin encouraged Russians to build a “strong family [with] two, three, or four children. [This] should be the image of a future Russia.” This August, he revived the Soviet-era “Mother Heroine” award, which pays $16,000 to women who have 10 or more children.[33] | ” |
The Institute for Family Studies states concerning national policies to raise birth rates: "Pro-natal incentives do work: more money does yield more babies. Anybody saying otherwise is mischaracterizing the research. But it takes a lot of money. Truth be told, trying to boost birth rates to replacement rate purely through cash incentives is prohibitively costly."[34]
The Science for Truth Information Center published a list of recommendations to legislators and politicians in April 2021:
“ | 1. To reconsider the level of cooperation with the UN and WHO and their funding in connection with activities that are contrary to the Constitution, Russian legislation and strategic goals for the sustainable growth of the population of the Russian Federation with an increase in life expectancy to 78 years. We are talking about the UN population policy in general and the promotion of the normality of homosexuality to children in the WHO sex education standards in particular.
2. To toughen the punishment for promoting homosexuality, transsexualism, abortion, childlessness and other types of depopulation behavior in the context of the current demographic crisis. Extend the ban on propaganda of depopulation ideologies to all age categories. [35] |
” |
Since the collapse of communism in Ukraine, the population of the country was halved under capitalism.[36]
Ukraine had 640,000 high school graduates in 2008, but only 360,000 in 2023. A bill was introduced into the Rada to reduce the number of Ukraine's institutes of higher learning from 170 state and 40 municipal colleges, as well as around 100 private universities,. not counting branches, to about 100.[37]
In 2023, the average age of soldier in Armed Forces of Ukraine was 43 years old.
See also: Global Christianity
Pew Research reported in 2015 that the average Christian woman in the world has 2.7 children.[40]
In terms of its geographic distribution, Christianity is the most globally diverse religion.[41] Christianity has recently seen explosive growth outside the Western World.[42] In 2000, there were twice as many non-Western Christians as Western Christians.[43] In 2005, there were four times as many non-Western Christians as there were Western World Christians.[44] There are now more non-Western missionaries than Western missionaries.[45]
Phillip Jenkins published the book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
Chuck Colson, citing the work of Jenkins, writes:
“ | As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntingtons betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.
For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million. According to Jenkins, the percentage of the worlds population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.[46] |
” |
According to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC), which has made projections up until the year of 2050, the percentage of the global population that are evangelical Christians/Pentecostals is expected to increase.[47]
The American sociologist and author Peter L. Berger introduced the concept of desecularization in 1999.[48][49] According to Berger, "One can say with some confidence that modern Pentecostalism must be the fastest growing religion in human history."[50] See also: Growth of pentecostalism and Growth of religious fundamentalism and Historical examples of the exponential growth of Christianity
The atheist author and advocate David Madison, PhD wrote in March 2019: "I remain haunted—and terrified—by what I read on a Christian website, not long after the turn of this century: that by 2025, there will be one billion (yes, that’s with a “b”) Pentecostals in the world."[51]
See also: Christianity in Africa and Global scope of indigenous evangelical Christianity evangelism
Africa has a high fertility rate and it is seeing a big population boom. According to the Institute For Security Studies: "Africa's population is the fastest growing in the world. It is expected to increase by roughly 50% over the next 18 years, growing from 1.2 billion people today to over 1.8 billion in 2035. In fact, Africa will account for nearly half of global population growth over the next two decades."[52] See also: Global desecularization
Between 2000 and 2020, the continent of Africa had more than 37,000 new Christians every day.[53]
For more information, please see: Study traces exponential growth of Christianity in Africa
“One of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and rapidly declining birthrate.” - Elon Musk[54]
"There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe the defining challenge of the 21st century will be climate change, and those who know that it will be the birth dearth, the population bust, the old age of the world." - Ross Douthat, token conservative at the New York Times.[55]
Categories: [Demography] [Population Politics]