Demography Is Destiny, Buchanan

"...Writing on the decline in Japanese students in U.S. universities, The Washington Post reports: “The number of children [in Japan] under the age of 15 has fallen for 28 consecutive years. The size of the nation’s high school graduating class has shrunk by 35 percent in the past two decades.”[ Once drawn to U.S. universities, more Japanese students staying home, By Blaine Harden, April 11, 2010]

Where have all the children gone?

Yet what is happening to Japan is not unique to Japan.  Russia’s population is shrinking at two to three times the pace of Japan’s. She is losing half a million people a year. Germany and Ukraine are running Japan a close race. Only immigration from Africa, South Asia and the Middle East enables Britain to project population growth. Native-born Brits are departing and dying.

Indeed, every one of the East Asian and European nations that scored highest on the international tests for math and science has a fertility rate that assures an aging and shrinking population.

Where is world population growth to come from?

Between now and 2050, Africa’s population will double to 2 billion. Latin America and Asia will add over a billion people.

Just six nations, Muslim and poor—Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey—are expected to add almost 500 million people to their combined populations by 2050.

If demography is destiny, the sun is not only setting in the Land of the Rising Sun. The sun is setting in the West.” (Full essay by Buchanan here)