Sir, - I believe Dr William Reville was using obsolete data on world population (Science Today, October 27th). Preliminary figures suggest that for the past couple of years the world population has been falling, while all European countries have a birthrate below replacement rate, with the exception of tiny Malta. On average we need a birth rate of 2.2 children per woman to maintain a population. Ireland, the second most fertile of European populations, produces 1.9 children; France, boosted by a large North African immigrant population, produces 1.8 children; while the rest have rates between 1.7 and 1.1. A visit to London, Paris or any other major European city will reveal that the Continent has to import vast numbers of young workers from the Third World to keep industry going.
The population of Eastern Europe, Russia and North America are all suffering the same decline, again with rates of about 1.5 children per woman or 30 per cent below replacement.
In South America and Southeast Asia the birth rate is now dipping below replacement while the biggest tranche of humanity, China, with its one-child policy and selective culling of girls by abortion and infanticide, is preparing for itself a demographic nightmare of a collapsing population dominated by a surfeit of batchelors.
Only in Africa and the MiddleEastern Islamic countries is the birth-rate per woman above replacement, while the only major developed country to maintain its population by a balance between births and deaths is Japan, where the contraceptive pill is not available.
Earlier this century statisticians noted that urbanisation brought about a reduction in the birth-rate to the extent that it is rare for a family to last more than three generations in a city environment; all cities need a seed-bed rural population to maintain the population. With increased urbanisation we can expect that not only will families extinguish themselves but whole tribes and ethnic groups. - Yours, etc., Michael Salter,
Dundalk,
Co Louth.