A UN report prepared for a conference on problems of demography in Asia notes that the continent will face stiff challenges because of its falling birthrate. The median fertility rate (children per woman) in Asia is rather high at 2.3. But the region's most developed countries are experiencing a rapid drop in the birthrate. A woman in South Korea and Japan will have less than 1.5 children.
More surprisingly, the same tendency is being seen in the industrially developed provinces of the People's Republic of China. On the whole, the fertility rate in China at present is 1.7, as compared to 2 in the 1990s and 6 in the 1960s. The fertility rate in Europe in 2005 was 1.52, as opposed to 1.46 at the beginning of this decade and 1.4 in the 1990s.
The sharply falling birthrate, the UN experts say, is related to equally dramatic socio-economic changes taking place in the rapidly developing countries of Asia. Even in China, where the government has imposed a policy of limiting births, those measures play a secondary role. Rapid industrialization, urbanization and the spread of Western culture is slowing down the birthrate there more than in Europe. In Europe, immigrants with high fertility and “delayed” births to older parents are playing demographic roles.
The birthrates in Europe and Asia are gradually becoming equal. That process will be finalized around the middle of the century, the United Nations predicts, at a fertility rate of about 1.85 and a worldwide rate of about 2. The experts add that this is a worldwide process: globalization is leading to a unification of family lifestyles.
Unification of birthrates is happening within countries as well. Experts at the Russian Center for the Demography and Ecology of Man have found that differentiation in the birthrate among the peoples of Russia is also decreasing. Jews still have the lowest fertility rate (1.3 in the 2002 census), followed by Russians and other Slavs (1.4). The highest rate, up to 3, is found among the North Caucasian peoples, Gypsies and the peoples of the Far North. That differentiation was much more marked three and four decades ago, when birthrates among all the inhabitants of Russia were higher. The Russian experts have noted the cause of the falling fertility rates seems to be the same as on the global scale – cultural and economic assimilation. They found that minority groups in which knowledge of the native language is widespread have higher fertility rates than those who are losing their native languages.
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