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

 

 

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. [Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml]

Back to Current Edition Citizen Review Archive LINKS Search This Site