Looking at Demographics in Asia & Europe

*

In the long term, demographics will determine a great deal.

In China, the gender disparity will very likely lead to some catastrophic problems.

~~~

BEIJING (AP) -- China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting in part from the country's tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday. Traditional preferences for sons has led to the widespread - but illegal - practice of women aborting babies if an early term sonogram shows it is a girl.

The tens of millions of men who will not be able to find a wife could also lead to social instability problems, the China Daily said in a front-page report.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_GENDER_IMBALANCE?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-01-12-10-14-48

In Europe, the demographic disaster is of completely different type. Europe is dying. Its populations will shortly begin to collapse. For Europe, the party is over. All that is left for it is the estate sales.

~~~

According to a recent report by the Rand Corporation, "Across Europe, birth rates are falling and family sizes are shrinking. The total fertility rate is now less than two children per woman in every member nation in the European Union."

Needless to say, demographers consider a birthrate of 2.1 children per family to be the replacement level at which a society's population size remains stable. Barring large-scale immigration, anything less means decline and dissolution.

A research study published last year in the International Journal of Andrology found a similar trend, concluding that, "Fertility rates have fallen and are now below replacement level in all European Union (EU) Member States. In the 20-year period since 1982," it noted, "most EU Member State countries have had total fertility rates continuously below replacement level."

At the bottom of the list are Spain, Italy and Greece, where birthrates hover around just 1.3 per couple, leading some forecasters to suggest, for example, that Italy's population could shrink by one-third by the middle of the century.

Others, such as Germany's 1.37, the UK's 1.74 and Sweden's 1.75, aren't all much better.

The figures are so bad that in many European countries, the total number of deaths each year has actually begun to exceed the number of births.

Indeed, the Council of Europe's 2004 Demographic Yearbook warned that, "for Europe as a whole, more people died in 2003 than were born." In 1990, said the yearbook, "three countries - Germany, Bulgaria and Hungary - had negative natural growth for the first time. By 2002, it was negative in fifteen countries."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467696394&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull