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Saturday, July 21, 2012

For the record: Fr. Gregory Gaston on World Population Collapse

World Population Collapse: Lessons for the Philippines

Gregory D. Gaston 
Reproduced with Permission 

A hundred countries today face increasing economic, socio-cultural, political and security problems while their populations age and start to decline, a result of Total Fertility Rates (TFR´s) falling below replacement levels since the 1960´s. As their population pyramid gradually becomes inverted, their ageing workforce, which foresees little replacement, needs to support a growing number of elderly. To resolve these difficulties, their governments desperately encourage their citizens to raise more children. If ever they succeed, their few working people in the future will be doubly burdened, as they must support not only the many elderly they already have, but also the many children they wish to have.

All this the Philippines will also have to experience after its fertility rate sinks to levels below replacement by 2025, brought about by today´s general trend of parents bearing less children, coupled with increasing emigration of individuals and families. It would be pointless to abandon the normal population pyramid we still have today, and then, like rich countries at present, wish to regain it by all means.

A serious study of the latest world demographic data will reject population control as a quick-fix solution to poverty in the Philippines, and hopefully encourage efforts towards good governance, both in the public and the private sectors: steps that will allow the Philippines to take full advantage of its rich human resources, which it can share to ageing countries desperately in need of them. 


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