The Birth Dearth In The West By Baron Bodissey

A lot is written these days about declining birthrates in Western countries and Japan. The most frequent statistic cited is the number of live births per woman in a population: in order for the population to replace itself and remain stable, that number must be about 2.1.

Obviously there are many factors that could complicate the calculation of this “replacement number”. An increase in war and pestilence would tend to raise it, since more births would be necessary in order to make up for an increased death rate. In the opposite direction, improved medical care and decades of peace would tend to reduce the replacement number.

But what governs the increase or decrease in a country’s population in any given year is the number of births compared with the number of deaths.

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