Free Republic

FORGET those plans to have a third child for the country because further increases in the birth rate could harm the economy, the nation's productivity watchdog has warned. A major analysis of the nation's increasing fertility rate said it was at its highest level for 25 years - but the Productivity Commission yesterday warned further increases may aggravate rather than solve the problem of the ageing of the population. This is because it will shift women out of the workforce while they care for babies, depressing labour supply and reducing the taxation base as our population ages, the Daily Telegraph...

British couples should have no more than two children to save the world from global warming, according to a green think tank. Campaigners from the Optimum Population Trust said limiting family size was the 'simplest and biggest' contribution people could make to saving the planet. While Britain need not follow the example of China and ban large families, having more than two children should be frowned upon in the same way as using a patio heater or driving a gas guzzling car. But critics said doctors and governments had no right to tell parents how many children to have -...

Universal access to contraception is needed to help fight climate change, it has been claimed. A spiralling global population, with an annual increase of 79 million people, is driving up greenhouse gas emissions, John Guillebaud of University College, London, and GP Pip Hayes of St Leonard's Practice, Exeter, said. And in an editorial in the British Medical Journal they raised the question of whether people in the UK should be told that stopping at two children is "the simplest and biggest contribution" that can be made to saving the planet. The doctors said every person born adds to greenhouse gas...

A human rights activist and author says after years of a sagging birthrate, the U.S. has once again climbed above the all-important replacement birth rate. Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, recently he completed work on his latest book -- Population Control: Real Costs, Illusionary Benefits. As previously reported by OneNewsNow, Mosher says due to years of voluntary birth control, the native European population is dying off. But he says fortunately that is not the case in the United States. "The good news is that we have now gotten back up to 2.1 children [per family], which is...

IF ACCOUNTANT Ulrika Hylander happens to get pregnant here, she would rather return home to Sweden. After all, she and her husband would together be entitled to more than a year's duration of paid parental leave there. Under existing laws here, she would get three months. Her husband, three days. The 39-year-old moved here last July when her husband was posted to work as a finance manager in a Swedish company. She mused: "It's tougher to have children here." Perhaps not for much longer. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew hinted at a dialogue on Wednesday that Singapore is reviewing its...

New York, July 18 (PTI) More babies were born in the United States last year than any other year in history, pointing to a potential start of a new baby boom like the one that followed World War II. A record number of 4,315,000 babies were born in the US last year, nearly the double of those born a century ago, the National Centre for Health Statistics said. "It's a record, and it's a particularly interesting record because the year it beats is 1957, which was the height of the baby boom," Robert Engelman, author of "More: Population, Nature and...

I was surfing the web late the other night and stumbled on an interesting article in the New York Times. Entitled No Babies?, it is a lengthy and fascinating look at demographic trends in Europe. There was no mention of football or any other sport. Instead, the article’s author examined the reasons for low European birth rates and offered a rather unsettling suggestion of what the continent might be like in coming decades. (Think of a depopulated place that resembles a theme park, like Venice). Yesterday morning, after the first critical sips of coffee had worked their magic, a serious...

...In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level ... first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible...

The birth rate in Russia in the first four months of 2008 increased by 12 percent from the same period of 2007. In the first four months of this year, 547,100 children were born, an increase of 58,400 from the same period of 2007, the Ministry of Health and Social Development said. “The number of applications for maternity capital certificates is also growing,” the ministry said. According to the Pension Fund, 218,032 maternity capital certificates had been issued by June 7, and 17,569 applications are under consideration. As the birth rate grows, the natural decrease situation is also improving. In...

Dr. Love is struggling.... Dr. Love's allies in the war on childlessness have fared no better. The Singaporean government's official matchmaking agency, the SDU -- the initials stand for Social Development Unit, but it's known to snarky islanders as "Single, Desperate, and Ugly" -- is situated just off the city-state's main shopping thoroughfare, and it doesn't seem nearly as popular as the nearby Emporio Armani.... The developed world is experiencing a wave of pro-natalist sentiment that threatens to bully the childless, tax the single, and reorient states toward the production rather than the protection of citizens. In most developed nations...

Smart journalists should never mistake a single data point for a meaningful development. Data isn't the plural of anecdote, as the saying goes. But every so often you have to go with your gut. And so I'm suggesting—not declaring—that the recent results from Pediatrix Medical Group may indicate that the slower economy is causing a decline in births. Pediatrix owns group practices of neonatal specialists and employs 1,070 physicians and 400 nurse practitioners in 32 states and Puerto Rico. Its teams staff some 257 neonatal intensive care units, about one-sixth of the nation's total. Pediatrix has a market capitalization of...

Fertility rates in Jerusalem have been declining among Arabs and rising among Jews in recent years, according to statistics the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies issued to mark Jerusalem Day, today. Among Arabs the rate has dropped to 4 children in 2006, from 4.3 in 2000, and among Jews it has risen to 3.9 children in 2006 from 3.7 in 2000. However, the ratio of Jews and Arabs hasn't changed - 66 percent Jews (489,480) and 34 percent Arabs (256,820) totaling 746,300 at the end of 2007. The negative migration balance in Jerusalem continued last year as 18,750 residents (most...

Britain's Jewish community is enjoying a demographic revival for the first time in 50 years because of massive growth in its haredi population. Almost three out of every four Jewish babies in the UK are born to ultra-Orthodox families, who account for 46,500 out of the estimated 280,000 Jews in the UK, according to Dr. Yaakov Wise of Manchester University's Center for Jewish Studies. By the second half of this century, haredim will outnumber secular ones, he said. "Though Britain's Jewish population is the fifth largest in the world, it has declined by 40 percent, from over 450,000 in 1950...

The teenage birthrate in California increased in 2006 for the first time in 15 years and costs taxpayers $1.7 billion a year - or $2,493 per baby, according to a report released Wednesday by the Oakland-based Public Health Institute. ... The financial losses cover a range of things, said the study's authors, from public assistance to foster care to diminished future taxable wages and spending power among the parents. "The costs are really starting to climb now. That's not money we can afford to lose," said Dr. Norman Constantine, a clinical professor of public health at UC Berkeley and lead...

WARSAW (AFP) — As life expectancy grows and birth rates slump across the EU, around one third of the bloc's population could be over the age of 65 by 2050, a social shift with the potential to transform the lives of Europeans. Only three years ago, just 16.5 percent of the inhabitants of the European Union's current 27 member states were over 65. The proportion is expected to grow to 18 percent by 2010, 25 percent by 2030 and 30 percent by 2050, according to recent forecasts from the EU's Eurostat data agency. The number of European residents over 65...

Over at the Corner, they’re quoting Bruce Thornton: [Europe is not reproducing because] “children are expensive. They require you to sacrifice your time and your interests and your own comfort. If your highest good is pleasure, if your highest good is a sophisticated life, then children get in the way. Why would you spend so much money and so much energy on children if your highest good is simply material well-being? That’s sort of the spiritual dimension of the problem.” Read Dr. Melissa Clouthier on the news that she was pregnant with twins at challenging time of her life H/T...

Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family. That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can't explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears. The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic "Family and Civilization," which has just been republished in an edited version by...

Apparently I’m not the only American with a new little bundle of joy. Bucking the trend in other industrialized nations, we’re experiencing a little baby boomlet, with the most children born since 1961. Some 4.3 million babies arrived in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Associated Press medical writer Mike Stobbe wrote up an amazingly detailed report analyzing the data. Some readers noticed something was missing: The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births....

Abortions are Down Across the Country -- but Why?The conclusion of a sweeping new nationwide study released today that included interviews with every known abortion provider in the country is unambiguous. Abortions are decreasing. The study, conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches issues related to reproductive health and sexuality, found that in 2005, the U.S. abortion rate fell to 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 to 44, the lowest level since 1974. The total number of abortions also declined, to a total of 1.2 million in 2005, well below the all-time high of 1.6 million...

by Steven Ertelt LifeNews.com Editor January 17, 2008 Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new report by an organization affiliated with Planned Parenthood finds that the number of abortions nationwide have fallen to their lowest point in 30 years and have declined 25 percent since 1990. Pro-life groups point to laws limiting abortions, the effectiveness of pregnancy centers and abstinence education as the reason why.