Free Republic

For years it’s been said that high levels of immigration are nothing to worry about. After all, we’re reminded, the proportion of the foreign-born population is still lower than it was during the Great Wave Era. The Great Wave Era of Immigration was a period between the 1880s and 1920s when shiploads of immigrants would enter New York Harbor, pass the Statue of Liberty, and go to Ellis Island to be admitted into the country. So don’t worry, the foreign-born proportion of the population is still lower than it was then. That was true, but we are now reaching the...

When will the world reach its peak population?According to data from the United Nations’ 2022 Revision of its World Population Prospects, we could see a peak of over 10.4 billion people sometime in the late 2080s.While the UN’s projections are the most widely used, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the most accurate. Several alternative models have predicted an earlier and lower peak, suggesting that the world’s population could decline sooner than expected.In the UN’s latest revisions, it lowered its own estimates for global population in 2100, from 10.9 billion (as of 2019) to 10.4 billion (as of 2022).In this graphic,...

Humanity has never had it better.Especially the couple of billion lucky folks who live in the United States and Canada, Western Europe, and East Asia (including, now, much of China).The details of the miracle that is modern life are worth repeating, since they are the water we swim in and easy to forget.Deaths in childbirth and childhood are nearly nonexistent. People live longer than ever and can expect to be (physically) healthy into their seventies, not stooped by hard farm, industrial, or household labor. War and conscription have largely ended. In Europe and East Asia, all deaths of violence are...

For 99.9% of Homo sapiens‘ 250,000 years on planet Earth, our population has remained below one billion individuals, and for much of that time, our species’ growth curve was relatively flat.Since 1800, however, the human population has exponentially ballooned to 8.1 billion from just under one billion. We now occupy almost all parts of the globe and ravenously consume resources beyond what Earth can sustainably provide for the long term.As eminent ecologist William E. Rees argues in an ominous new paper, this is a recipe for impending disaster.Boom and bust cyclesFor 40 years, Rees taught at the University of British...

The scales have fallen from the eyes of Henry Kissinger. He was a signatory in 2015 to a letter that urged Congress to pass legislation allowing more Muslims from Syria and Iraq — claiming to be refugees — to be admitted to the United States. Now he looks at Europe, where millions of Muslims have been allowed to settle, where they batten on the benefits provided by those generous welfare states, and sees how they have spread the virus of antisemitism that they brought with them when they arrived. Kissinger was shaken by the murderous antisemitism that was on display...

As we’ve covered many times already, China’s economy is struggling, particularly the construction portion which makes up about a quarter of the country’s GDP. Last week while all of us were distracted by the war in Israel, one of China’s major developers missed loan payments and said it would soon default on its debt.The embattled property developer Country Garden said on Tuesday that it was unable to repay a loan and expected to miss upcoming overseas debt payments as a result of plunging sales from China’s spiraling property crisis.The announcement, made on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is effectively a...

Historian Victor David Hanson explains the changing demographics and dynamics that will determine the future of California. (Good News)

Renowned geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan recently made a startling prediction during an interview with commentator Joe Rogan. Zeihan believes that China's collapse is imminent, with only 10 years remaining before potential disaster. The crux of his prediction lies in his assertion that China has misrepresented its population numbers, leading him to estimate that the country's actual population is lower by 100 million than what the government has officially reported. "This is their last decade," Zeihan said of China. When Rogan clarified by asking, So, you're saying that China has 10 years to go?" His response was, "At most." Some argue...

TOKYO -- Up to 42% of Japanese women born in 2005 could end up not having children in their lifetimes, according to a government estimate, a high percentage that could threaten the future of its social security program. Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research gives this estimate for women born in 2005 under its low-birth scenario. In the medium scenario, 33.4% of this group will go through their childbearing years without having kids. In the most optimistic case, the rate will be 24.6%. The percentage is even higher for men, who are more likely to be unmarried...

Florida and Idaho are America's fastest-growing states, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Their populations increased by 1.9 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively, causing them to rise to 22.2 million and 1.9 million from July 2021 to June 2022.The two are followed by South Carolina, Texas and South Dakota. While Texas is seeing both a high number of births and high levels of national and international migration, domestic movement of people has been a major factor for Idaho, South Carolina and South Dakota to achieve population growth. In Florida, the state with the largest net birth deficit,...

Generation Z will be the last generation of Americans with a white majorityAn increasingly diverse young population is making up for aging white BoomersREAD MORE: America's white population now less than 60 percent for first timeThe majority of Americans will not be white by 2045, according to data that highlights the US' increasingly diverse population. An analysis of census data by the think-tank Brookings Institution estimates that white people will comprise less than 50 percent of the US population for the first time in history in little over two decades. The majority of the population will be made up of...

Japan’s population crisis is accelerating, with the number of nationals falling by more than 800,000 in the past year – echoing similar trends seen in other East Asian countries. As of January 1 this year, Japan’s total population stood at 125.4 million, including both Japanese and foreign residents, according to data released on Wednesday by Japan’s internal affairs ministry. The number of foreign residents rose by nearly 289,500 compared to the previous year – a significant increase of more than 10%. But the number of Japanese residents shrank by 800,523, marking the 14th consecutive year of contraction since a peak...

China’s economic recovery seems to have stalled, and the CCP’s standing at home still depends on Xi Jinping’s government creating a “Chinese dream” of a middle-class lifestyle. The end of Covid restrictions, just eight months ago, seemed to mark the start of a powerful bounceback in consumption; travel agencies were besieged by people booking holidays they had been denied for nearly three years. But in the past few months there have been more worrying signs. Youth unemployment is growing: about one in five of China’s 16- to 24-year-olds were unemployed in June. Many university graduates have had to take jobs...

Democrats believed not so long ago that ongoing demographic shifts in the ethnic makeup of the US destined them to a nearly permanent majority. Oversimplifying, thanks to massive immigration (legal and illegal) and declining birthrates among Caucasians, ethnicities that have tended to support Dems would become their permanent majority. Nobody can take more credit for this idea spreading to become almost gospel among political observers of all stripes than a PhD sociologist named Ruy Teixera, who co-authored a 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, which New York Times later called “one of the most influential political books of the 21st...

America has fewer children now than it did 10 years ago. That’s not in terms of percentages but raw numbers. New Census Bureau data released on Thursday show how the age pyramid of the United States is looking less like a pyramid and more like an upside-down onion or a vase. America has more people in their 60s than we have under age 10. We’ll get to that onion-vase in a minute, but let’s just start with the minor shortage, which was discovered in the most recent census . “In 2020, there were over 73.1 million children under age 18,”...

French President Emmanuel Macron warned Wednesday that France faces an "uncivilising process", a government source said, following the violent deaths of a nurse and three policemen and repeated attacks on elected officials. "We must be uncompromising on the fundamentals. There is no legitimate violence, whether verbal or against people," Macron told ministers at a cabinet meeting. "We have to work from top to bottom to counteract this uncivilising process," he added, in comments first reported by daily Le Parisien and confirmed to AFP by a person present in the meeting room. Macron was "calling society to order," a person close...

Without unrestricted immigration, nations like the United States cannot survive unless women have about 2.1 children each (the .1 reflects women who do not have children). The bad news is that the U.S. is falling short in reproducing itself. Occasional exceptions such as the Baby Boom aside, U.S. fertility rates have dropped over the last two centuries and show no sign of rising to the 2.1 replacement level. We are currently at 1.6.The baby shortfall has huge consequences beyond potentially filling the nation with immigrants. An aging population brings higher healthcare costs, budgets devoured by pensions, shrinking tax bases, labor...

Russia is in the midst of a historic population decline as it continues to grapple with low birth rates, high emigration, staggering health statistics and a deadly war in Ukraine. The growing crisis has been described by some as a "silent war" against its own human capital. Russian President Vladimir Putin has listed Russia’s declining population as a matter of national security, but his recent war in Ukraine has not only led to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths among fighting-age men but has pushed a mass exodus among Russia's younger populations. Western defense officials have estimated that as many...

The UN recently announced that India will become the most populous country in the world, surpassing China by the middle of this year. That’s only the tip of the iceberg in a massive global shift in population that will alter the balance of world power in the next 30 years.China lost population last year for the first time in six decades. As Axios reports, China will eventually end up in the same boat as Japan — an aging population with a workforce insufficiently large to care for it.China will increasingly face a similar challenge to Japan — where the population...

Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, intrepid journalists at The Epoch Times have uncovered a previously secret CDC program to tag and track unvaxxed and “undervaccinated” (apparently meaning people who took one or more shots but did not get their so-called “boosters”) U.S. citizens. Via The Epoch Times (emphasis added):Medical codes introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to show when people are unvaccinated or undervaccinated for COVID-19 are being used to track people, the top U.S. public health agency has confirmed.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made the confirmation in emails that The Epoch Times obtained through...