The study raises new questions about the problem of overpopulation the planet already faces.
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PARIS: The ironclad axiom that the wealthier a nation the lower its birthrate may reverse when countries pass a certain threshold of development, reports a new study.
Most of the two dozen nations that have passed this tipping point – including Australia, Sweden, France, the United States and Britain – are enjoying modest baby booms, breaking a pattern of declining fertility that has held for decades if not longer.
Moving up the ladder
If the trend holds for these and other countries moving up the socio-economic ladder, it could have huge and largely positive implications for what have been up to now rapidly ageing societies, the researchers said.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated last month that the number of persons on the planet over 65 years old will double from just over 500 million today to 1.3 billion in 2040.
However, the study raises new questions about the problem of overpopulation the planet already faces.
"Our findings are highly relevant in the debate on the future of the world's population ... and provide a different outlook for the 21st century," notes the study, published in the British journal Nature today.
Myriad problems
The myriad problems stemming from sagging birthrates – increased health costs for the elderly supported by a shrinking workforce – had seemed to be the inevitable price to pay for higher incomes and longer lifespans.
Most well-off nations have long since slipped below the fertility rate needed simply to maintain a stable population, an average of 2.1 children per woman.
If unchanged, the 2005 birthrates of countries such as South Korea, Japan, Italy and Spain – 1.08, 1.26, 1.32 and 1.33, respectively – will, in the absence of immigration, halve each nation's population in 40 to 45 years.
The further these and other countries advanced along a widely used measure of social progress called the Human Development Index (HDI), earlier studies showed, the fewer babies were born per woman.
The HDI scale takes into account life expectancy, GDP per capita and literacy rates, and runs from zero to 1.0. The 20 lowest placed countries – all in Africa – score from 0.30 to 0.48, and the 20 highest score from 0.93 to 0.97.
Boom or trend deviation?
In Australia the increased birthrate is still a long way short of the replacement rate. The factors possibly seem to be older career mothers realizing that time is running out and a substantial government payment for having children.
There may be similar temporary causes in the other countries cited.
These should be discounted before the general pattern of natural decline following a period of expoential growth is abandoned.
How much of the baby boom is...
attributed to poor immigrant populations?
Exactly
Japan for example is notorious for it's homogenity and very limited immigration policies- and they have q low birthdate - likewise US population growth is driven by immigrants and their cultural differences from aging wasp America - notqbly Hispanics. That is just two among a dozen but anecdotally I know that France has a liberal immigration policy and a large minority of those coming from lesser developed areas of the world and presumably bring along there fertility 'inertia' as well.
Eureka
Basic maths combined with a little common sense will come to the conclusion of "Exactly" above. The population explosion in the 3rd World moves economic migrants to the 1st World where they have even more opportunity to breed than in their countries of birth. There is a sense of delicious irony in the way in which many former colonies export their surplus population to the country of their former masters.
England is also ...
... overloaded with migrants - primarily from Muslim Pakistan. England now is the world's 4th most crowded country with only Bangladesh, South Korea and the Netherlands being more densely populated. Pakistanis now account for more than 80% of England's population growth. Population growth in the Netherlands is almost entirely the result of its high Muslim birth rate.
Gerry, Ottawa, Canada
Gerry, unfortunately that
Gerry, unfortunately that was a tabloid misrepresentation. England, with 383 people per square kilometre, would be the 27th most crowded country in the world... if it were even a country. England is part of the UK, which does not make the top fifty. If we were to break the world down into regions and nations, which is what England is, then I imagine it would not even make the top hundred.
Comparing England with, say, China is unfair since you aren´t including sparsely-populated Wales and Scotland, meanwhile China´s density numbers are lowered by accounting for its inhospitable interior.