Census Bureau: World Population Slowing to Dangerous Levels
by Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
March 24, 2004
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A report released Monday by the
Census Bureau shows that world population growth is slowing to dangerous
levels.
In its report, "Global Population Profile: 2002," the Census
Bureau notes that the 74 million people added to the world's population
in 2002 were significantly fewer than the high of 87 million people
added in 1989-1990. The growth rate was a meager 1.2 percent, down
from the high of 2.2 percent in 1963-64.
"Census Bureau projections show this slow-down in population
growth continuing into the foreseeable future," states the Bureau's
brief on the findings. "Census Bureau projections suggest that
the level of fertility for the world as a whole will drop below replacement
level before 2050."
The Bureau attributes the dropping growth rate to two major phenomena
– the AIDS epidemic and declining fertility rates, including increased
contraceptive use.
"In 1990 the world's women, on average, were giving birth to
3.3 children over their lifetimes," says the Census Bureau. "By
2002 the average was 2.6 – less than one-half of a child more than
the level needed to assure the replacement of the population."
"It's time for the population control movement to call off the
dogs," responded Steven Mosher, president of Population Research
Institute (PRI). "The population explosion it predicted never
happened, and the anti-natalists should pack up their tents and go
home."
"As birth rates fall into the cellar, it's time 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," said Mosher.
"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. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 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," Mosher explained.
In December, the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) released
a report including a projection that showed the population of the
world spiraling downward from the current 6.3 billion to 2.3 billion
by 2300.
In some areas, the report found, fertility rates have dropped to incredible
lows – a fact that U.N. population groups, such as the UNPD, ignore
or downplay in their projections.
"[In Italy] fertility has declined, and only declined, from 2.3
in 1950 to 1.2 today," said Scott Weinberg of PRI. "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."
"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 Sites:
U.S. Census Bureau – http://www.census.gov
Population Research Institute – http://www.pop.org