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Latest UN Report Confirms World Population Headed for Plummet

NEW YORK, January 27, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A newly released report from the United Nations affirms that world population levels which have been stagnating of late are headed for decline in the developed world with the developing world closely following the trend.

Women and men in developing countries are marrying later, having fewer children and having them later, following the pattern set earlier in the developed world. As a result, average fertility in developing countries has declined to under three children per woman. This is one of the major findings from World Fertility Report 2003, issued by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The report documents changes in reproductive behaviour, including marriage and contraceptive use, in 192 countries of the world since the early 1970s. The report also presents the latest information concerning governments’ views and policies on fertility.

Men and women are spending longer periods of their life unmarried, according to the report. Among the world’s 192 countries, the median proportion of women single at ages 25-29 increased from 15 per cent in the 1970s to 24 per cent in the 1990s. Among men, the increase was from 32 per cent to 44 per cent. The increases were even more substantial for developed countries, where the median proportion of singles at ages 25-29 increased from 15 per cent to 38 per cent among women and from 26 per cent to 57 per cent among men.

A huge increase in the use of birth control has taken place. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the median level of contraceptive prevalence (any method including abortifacients and natural family planning) among all 192 countries increased from 38 per cent of women currently married or in union to 52 per cent. Among developing countries, median contraceptive prevalence rose from 27 per cent to 40 per cent.

The report notes that government policies have played major roles in encouraging population control, but fails to mention that much of this effort was at the behest of the United Nations and other international organizations such as International Planned Parenthood, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

By 2001, says the report, “92 per cent of all governments supported family-planning programmes and distributed contraceptives either directly (75 per cent), through government facilities, or indirectly (17 per cent), by supporting the activities of non-governmental organizations, such as family-planning associations.”

As a result, world population has experienced a major and unprecedented reduction of fertility levels, driven mostly by the decline in fertility in developing countries. Fertility in developing countries today averages around 2.9 children per woman. And in 20 developing countries, fertility is currently below or far below replacement level.

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