Baby bust: one of the main reasons birth rates are down in Canada is the tendency of women to delay starting families until later in life, with the average age of a woman having her first child at about 29.

Canada is running out of people. In common with 59 other countries, which together contain 44 percent of the world's population, Canada's population is declining. These 60 countries have fertility rates below 2.1 children per woman, the number needed to keep a stable population. Half the country's have a level of 1.5 or less. In Armenia, Italy, South Korea, and Japan, average fertility levels are close to one child per woman.

Among the major industrialized nations, only the United States now has significant population growth, and it has settled at about replacement level.

As a result, by 2050, industrialized countries are projected to increase their population by only four percent, while the population of developing countries is expected to expand by 55 percent.

At present, Canada is making up for lost numbers through immigration. However, we tend to let in only highly educated newcomers, and these are people who usually have smaller families.

The implications of lower population numbers are serious.

We can see Canada's future in Germany, where population decline started earlier. Without newborns in large numbers, Germany's population is aging rapidly and this is very bad news for social programs.

Today, pensions in Germany swallow up 15 percent of all taxes. The country's public spending on pensions, even after cuts in future benefits that are written into current law, is expected to swell from an already staggering 10.3% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to 15.4% by 2040. At the same time, the number of workers available to support each retiree will shrink from 2.6 to 1.4. Meanwhile, the cost of government health-care benefits for the elderly is expected to rise from today's 3.8% of GDP to 8.4% by 2040. In fact, Germany's aging population is seen as the country's biggest long-term challenge.

According to one report, the country's population is imploding, not just because of a lack of babies but because young, qualified people are moving away, creating a downward economic spiral as well.

Elisabeth Niejahr is the author of a book on Germany's aging population. She outlines the financial woes of the public pension and the health-care systems in her 2004 book Altenrepublik (Republic of the Old). She says the changing structure of the population will affect the whole of society in terms of work and daily life even down to the food people eat, as well as housing and consumer products.

The United Nations predicts that by 2045 the entire world's fertility rate will fall below replacement levels and populations will be dropping everywhere.

Nicholas Eberstadt, author of The Population Implosion (published in 1997), says "Both Europe and Japan, for example, entered into 'sub-replacement' childbearing patterns over a generation ago and are poised for prolonged depopulation. In most developing countries, birthrates are plummeting. China's fertility is now at sub-replacement levels, partly because of Beijing's anti-birth programs. Other Third World countries without coercive population policies are veering toward sub-replacement, too--Brazil and Iran, for example."

Mr. Eberstadt says the 21st century may turn out to be an era of population decline, and he turns to another writer, Phillip Longman, for confirmation.

In The Empty Cradle (published in 2004), Mr. Longman writes: "The global fall in fertility, is creating a world for which few individuals, and no nations, are prepared ... because population growth and the human capital it creates are part of the foundation upon which modern economies, as well as modern welfare states, are built."

And, columnist Doug Saunders pointed out in The Globe and Mail in July 2004, "... as populations age, nations become poorer and far less competitive: The proportion of the population dependent on public resources like medicine and pensions increases dramatically, and the proportion contributing to such public coffers drops."

Mr. Saunders cites the International Monetary Fund warning to the United States (with one of the youngest populations in the Western world) that it will have to increase taxes by 60 percent or decrease health-benefit payments by 50 percent to account for its aging.

In general, Mr. Saunders says when population declines: "Taxes rise dramatically, income inequality multiplies, and the number of people below the poverty line increases fast. Things like environmental protection, peacekeeping, and improved health care become impossible."

Canada's population of seniors is growing quickly and the numbers will take off when the baby boom generation starts to hit 65 in 2012. In 1999, seniors made up only 12.3% of Canada's population, but it's expected to rise to 16 percent by 2016, 18 percent by 2021, and 22 percent by 2031.

The number of very old is skyrocketing too: in 2040, there will be an estimated 1.6 million Canadians who will be over the age of 85.

American author, Peter G. Peterson, says rich countries will have to spend between nine and 16 percent of their GDP to meet their old-age benefit commitments. This aging of the populace in developed countries is likely to turn financial markets upside down and cause major wobbles in public finances, he says.

So, many countries are encouraging their citizens to go forth and multiply:

* In 2004, France's government started awarding mothers of each new baby 800 auras, about $1,000;

* The Italian government is giving mothers of a second child 1,000 auras;

* South Korea has expanded tax breaks for families with young children and is increasing support for day-care centres for working women;

* Japanese authorities have been organizing hiking trips and cruises for single people, and setting up dating programs to halt the baby bust;

* Estonia's President Arnold Ruutel, in a television address, urged the country's 1.4 million residents to produce more babies, or face a rapidly declining population;

* British authorities also worry about the fertility rate. The Office of National Statistics says fertile women will need to have three children to keep Britain's population at 59 million into the future; and,

* Even China, despite its 1.3 billion people, is reportedly considering revising its "one child" rule because its fertility rate of 1.39 is creating an older population--and social and economic problems.

And, there's another factor that will make the problem of aging populations even bigger. James Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research says that life expectancy has risen by precisely 2.5 years every decade for the past 150 years. By 2060, life expectancy for newborns will be 100 years. Immortality? Who knows.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. In his 1999 book, Maybe One (0452280923), author Bill McKibben argues that North American families should limit themselves to one child, despite an already-low birth rate. The way he sees it, people in industrialized countries threaten the earth as wasteful consumers and polluters. He writes: "My daughter, age 4 (in 1998), has already used more stuff, added more waste to the environment than most of the world's residents in a lifetime." Discuss whether or not you believe having fewer children is the answer to this problem, as well as the disadvantages of this approach, and other possible solutions.

2. Roy MacGregor points out in his column in The Globe and Mail that not all predictions work out. "We were wrong about gas and oil reserves, wrong about the forests, wrong about television killing radio and radio killing books ..." Little more than 25 years ago a famous set of computer studies sponsored by the Club of Rome, the global think tank, showed that population pressures would devastate the world by the mid-1990s. It didn't happen. The authors could not have foreseen the drop in fertility rates in many countries, or other major world events such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which created economic uncertainties that also froze the birth rate in Eastern Europe. Speculate about things that could happen, or not, that might alter fertility and aging in ways that could make current predictions of too few young people and too many old people unimportant.

3. Try to find other communities within your area that are promoting higher birthrates, and do a report on what programs are being used to encourage families to increase their numbers.

FACT FILE

The rate of world population growth reached its peak in the late 1960s at 2.04% a year. By 1999, it was 1.31%.

People 65 and over receive 11 times more in federal spending per capita than do children under age 18.

Japanese singles are often called "parasites" because, when they retire. they have no children paying into the national pension system or helping

In 1995, 17.4% of Swedes were 65 or older, 16.6% of Italians, 15.7% of Britons, 15.4% of Germans, and 15.2% of Swiss.

CONFUSED?

Expressing concern about declining population might seem like a contradiction to the notion that there are too many people in the world. Well, it all depends on what part of the world you're looking at: generally, it's the rich, industrial nations that are concerned about a drop in population, while developing nations worry about population growth that will strain already meagre resources.

Many underdeveloped countries have such huge populations to begin with that even with the extraordinary achievements of the last 40 years in family planning, maternal and child health, and gender equality, they are adding huge numbers of people.

Half of the growth in the world's population is taking place in six nations--India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh. By contrast, the 25 member nations of the European Union together added as many people to their total population in all of 2003 as India did in the first five days of that same year.

So, the problems vary according to the distribution of population, lust as problems exist over the distribution of wealth around the world. The result is that some of the poorest countries have the highest populations, while the rich countries need more people to keep their economic engines running, and support their growing ranks of the aged.

LITTLE RUMBLINGS

In 1990, demographers talked of a baby boomlet as the tail end of the baby boomers (those born in the 1960s) started to have children. But, after the mid-1960s, as the baby boom petered out, the birth rate went down again. Recently, there have been reports of a "baby blip," which started a few years ago as thirty-something women staffed to have their first babies. For the most part, the women say they delayed having children until they had a decent job, a decent relationship, and some financial security. In 200t, the birth rate was up in Canada for the first time in a decade, with the biggest increases among mothers in the 30 to 34, and 35 to 39 age groups. However, the highest fertility rate continues to be among 25- to 29-year-olds, though it tell 26 percent between 1981 and 2001. At the same time, the rate for women aged 30 to 34 rose 35 percent.

But, the increase wasn't expected to last long, and it didn't. The following year, in 2002, the birth rate dropped slightly again. Today, Canada's birth rate is only about a third of its all-time recorded high of 49.3 births for every 1,000 people in 1921. That rate was nearly matched during the baby-boom years that started in 1946 when soldiers returned home from the Second World War: it was 28.5, for example, in 1954. And. new moms are getting older: the average age of a mother now when her first baby is born is 27.7. In 1971, it was 23.8. Fewer than half of babies are now born to mothers in their 20s, compared with two-thirds two decades ago.

There are isolated pockets in the country though that are doing their bit to help keep up our population numbers. In Quebec, for example, the small town of Coaticook has an annual Christmas raffle with cash prizes of up to $1,000, and a large chunk of the winnings go to families with more than three children. While the province's birth rate is just 1.4 offspring per woman of childbearing age--among the lowest in the Western world, 14 percent of Coaticook's families have three or more children, compared with nine percent provincewide. Eager to keep the town growing, Coaticook sends parents $100 for their first child, $200 for the second, and the price of a cloth-diaper service, and contributes $500 per child when the family buys a home. Families with three or more kids also receive a 50 percent discount on recreation and cultural activities, from figure skating to painting classes.

DYING OUT

If you'd read The Economist in December 1998, you might have stumbled on an article about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), included in a website called Kooks Museum. The man behind VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is Les U. Knight, and he thinks the biggest favour we could do the world is to achieve zero population. Not only would the remaining life forms not miss us, Mr. Knight says, "The biosphere would breathe a sigh of relief.

"All of the things that humans consider important are only important to humans," he adds, "They really don't help out anything else."

Mr. Knight does have some mixed feelings about the whole idea though. When asked why he didn't just end it all now (for himself at least because the movement has to be voluntary), he replied: "Death comes soon enough. More good can be done by living than by dying."

On the other hand, The Economist argues, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, that human ingenuity is one of our greatest strengths, and surely we could find ways less extreme than extinction to solve the problems we've created. "Better conservation, or perhaps fewer humans ... but not no humans at all."

Everyone, including Mr. Knight, recognizes that people are not likely to stop reproducing. Given that some scientists think it won't be too long before it's common for us to reach 100, we could become a planet of ancients. This prospect makes our current concerns about health-care and pensions seem puny compared to the possible crisis future generations could face. Extinction of the species, voluntary or otherwise, seems a long way off.

Websites

Population Reference Bureau--http://www.prb.org/

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research--http://www.demogr.mpg.de/