Washington D.C., Nov 3, 2018 / 07:01 am (CNA).- Despite recent disparaging Western commentary on high African birth rates, fertility rates on the continent are normal when viewed in the context of development, new data analysis from the Institute for Family Studies shows.
The analysis comes weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron commented at a Gates Foundation event in New York that educated women do not choose to have large families. “I always say: ‘Present me the woman who decided, being perfectly educated, to have seven, eight or nine children,’” he said.
While Macron clarified that he was speaking about the lack of educational opportunities in African countries, his comments struck a nerve with women in the United States and throughout the world. One professor at Catholic University of America started the hashtag #PostcardsforMacron on social media, with which educated women from different countries shared photos of their large families.
In a new analysis published this week, Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, said that the fertility rate of most African countries is normal when other factors such as levels of development and child mortality rates are considered.
“What’s really going on here is quite simple: United Nations demographers have repeatedly messed up their forecasts of African fertility in more-or-less the same direction, and, rather than give a good explanation about why that is, the development community is responding by faulting Africans for having kids,” Stone wrote.
Each time the U.N. has forecasted Africa’s population for 2050, the numbers of their prediction have increased, causing some demographers to publish papers “bemoaning Africa’s curiously slow ‘demographic transition’ to near-replacement fertility,” Stone said.
For example, in 2008, the U.N. predicted that by 2050, the fertility rate in Africa would fall to about 2.5 children per woman, close to near-replacement rates, which range from about 2.1 to 2.3 children per woman.
But in 2017, the U.N. predicted that instead, the fertility rate in Africa by 2050 would be about 3.25 children per woman.
“This upward trend in forecast population stems from the fact that U.N. demographers have repeatedly overestimated how quickly Africa’s fertility would decline.”
But that doesn’t mean that Africa’s fertility rates are not declining overall, Stone noted. “You might think, then, that Africa’s fertility is rising! But actually, it isn’t! African fertility is falling!” he wrote.
Between 1965 and 2015, the fertility rate in Sub-Saharan African countries fell from almost 7 children per woman to slightly less than 5 children per woman. The decline has been slight, and slow, but steady – just not as dramatic as some Western groups had hoped, Stone noted.
“The entire scary story about African fertility really boils down to fractional differences in the rate of future fertility decline. In other words, Macron’s comments about ‘6 or 7 or 8’ kids are totally irrelevant,” he wrote.
“Africa’s ‘problem,’ as far as U.N. demographers are concerned, isn’t women having seven kids today; it’s women having three kids, 40 years from now when they ‘should’ have had just two.”
The complaint that the African population and fertility rates are high is not new, Stone noted – “it’s part and parcel of old-school racist colonialism. Colonial regimes often tried various inhuman measures to reduce population growth. It’s no surprise the successors to colonial regimes, do-gooder ‘family planning’ NGOs, are pushing the same concerns.”
One factor being ignored in the “fear-mongering” of those who say African fertility rates are too high is child mortality rates, which are typically good predictors of fertility rates, Stone said.
Typically, the more developed a country, the lower the child mortality rates and fertility rates are, he said. This is because as countries develop and people live longer, healthier lives, parents can reasonably expect that their children will live well into adulthood, driving down the need for many children in hopes that some will live into adulthood.
Furthermore, as people become more educated, they learn to manage their own fertility better, and have jobs “where brains are often more useful than brawn,” reducing the economic need for having more children.
When rates of child mortality are considered, the fertility rates in most African countries are normal, Stone wrote.
“Adding in control variables for urbanization or dependence on agriculture or natural resources doesn’t change the story: African fertility looks fairly normal for its level of development,” he said, when compared with similar countries in Asia, which have slightly lower fertility rates, and countries in Latin America which have higher fertility rates.
Africa is also a large and varied continent, and fertility rates vary significantly between its countries, Stone noted.
Furthermore, comparing fertility rates among developing countries also must take into account what kinds of family planning policies are being implemented in those countries, Stone said.
While Western groups like the Gates Foundation say that they want family planning policies in African countries to respect women’s freedom, at the same time they want the fertility rates in Africa to decline as dramatically as in countries such as China or India, which have implemented inhumane practices such as the “One Child” policy or forced sterilizations.
“In other words, Western donors need to get their story straight: do they want Africa to experience East-Asian style fertility declines, or do they want African countries to pursue democratically-compatible, rights-respecting population policies? You can’t have it both ways,” Stone noted.
In fact, Stone added, it is unclear why Western groups think they should get a say in African fertility rates at all.
“Western countries should have learned their lesson: it’s time to stop acting like African policy can be made from London or Paris or Seattle. Truth be told, Western organizations have no right, and no moral credibility, to step in and tell African women what they should or shouldn’t do with their bodies. We would be much better off looking for ways to solve our own fertility problems.”
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I hope the people of Israel come out of this safely. I had the opportunity to go there on a pilgrimage with my church in 2019. It was an immense privilege to walk in so many biblical towns and have daily Mass in all the churches. A beautiful and interesting place. The site of the crucifixion and the tomb was amazing to see and touch. Very spiritually moving. We were there during the Trump administration, and the American embassy had just been moved to Jerusalem. I was so sad to hear news of this attack this morning. Many of those living there are transplanted Americans. Please pray for them.
Israel will prevail, but at a cost. Things will get ugly. The Palestinians blame Israel for their misery and stupidity. Man for man, the Israelis put them to shame.
Palestinians are intelligent people but have been manipulated and misled by Hamas. It’s a tragedy.
Biden built this; he, Valerie Jarret and Obama. The finger prints are obvious. I wouldn’t be surprised at all that many of the munitions Hamas used were sold off from the Ukraine and have our insignias. There is no oversight and Ukraine’s government is the epitome of moral bankruptcy. This news just makes the Lacrimarum Vale that much deeper, darker and loathsome.
From Islamist anti-Semitism is behind Israel’s darkest hour since the Yom Kippur war, by Jake Wallis Simons, October 7, 2023:
Excerpt (with link omitted, bold style added):
In response, sensible voices must be absolutely clear: this was an anti-Semitic attack. It was of a piece with the pogroms carried out by the Cossacks, the Iraqi mobs during the Farhud, and the Nazis.
That last example is especially powerful, as a direct line can be drawn from Hitler to Hamas. During the Second World War, the extremist Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini, who compared Jewishness to infectious disease and Jews to microbes or bacilli, worked with Nazi officials to translate Third Reich ideology into an Arabic context and transmit it into the Middle East via radio, leaflets and other means. His twisted ideology rings loudly in our ears today.
Look at Hamas’s charter. Article 32 – a conspiracy theory which accuses the Zionists of wishing to take over the entire territory between the Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq, an area of thousands of square miles – says: “Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” To describe Hamas as being influenced by Nazi propaganda is insufficient. This is Nazi propaganda.
I don’t believe that this was a surprise attack. It is likely a “playing the victim” strategy.
Interesting comment, considering the Jerusalem Post is suggesting the attack is a contender for the greatest intelligence failure in Israeli history. “How did Israel fall so far to such an inferior enemy?” the tagline asks. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-765254
Perhaps you will claim that the JPost story is also part of the same strategy? A rabbi in Jerusalem claims that the earthquake in Morocco was caused by their king’s call for Jerusalem to become the Palestinian capital. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-761707
Seems like there’s no shortage of dotted-line thinking on both sides.
Which side do you think is playing victim?
After the British occupiers left Palestine, the United Nations 1947 Resolution no. 181 mandated the creation of two nations, Israel and Palestine, each with almost equal land areas. After wars and perpetual tensions through the decades the land area has been disproportionately made unequal by continued Israeli grabbing of Palestinian lands in defiance of UN and international laws leaving the Palestinians with only small portions that is the West Bank and Gaza even as the state of Palestine remains not fully established and sovereign today. While the Western media portray the Palestinians as the bad guys and terrorists, it is actually the Israelis who are so by their continued dispossession and dislocation of the Palestinians in violation of UN and international laws. Even present day pilgrims to the Holy Land can readily see the continued construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank contravening UN and international laws. Seen from this perspective, the modern state of Israel can be compared to China defying UN and international laws like the International Court of Arbitration that judged China’s grabbing of Philippine maritime territory as illegal. Palestinian militants rising against Israel mighty army can be compared to the Filipinos’ decrepit coast guard standing up against China’s bully coast guard as seen more and more on TV news recently.
There are many, many questions that need to be answered about the attack on Israel yesterday. How could a country with intelligence agencies renowned for their ability to infiltrate its enemies and allies alike be caught so flat-footed? This was a major operation and the Mossad apparently had no inkling that it was coming. That is very hard to believe. The surveillance and detection systems at the border were reportedly jammed by Hamas. If that is true, why did this in and of itself not cause an alarm to go off? Where was the world-class Israeli Air Force, which must patrol the relatively short border around the clock? Paragliders sailed right across the border after dawn had already broken without a sign of an Israeli aircraft, which could have easily picked them off. Even more incredibly, there is video of Hamas troops casually cutting through the border fence later in broad daylight with no cover and then streaming through with their pickup trucks and motorcycles in the open desert. Again, an airstrike by jets that could have arrived in a couple of minutes would have wipe these people out in an instant. This is either an epic and astonishing failure of Israel’s entire security apparatus or there is more to this story than what we see on the surface. I don’t pretend to know what happened and am afraid that no one is going to be seriously interested in finding out.
If Israel’s intelligence was taken off guard it should give us pause to wonder where our own defense system may have gaps. There’s no perfect intelligence department. We become complacent at our own peril.
The Gaza strip, and all Palestinian territory, is heavily infiltrated by Mossad, Shin Bet, and IDF personnel. *No way were they surprised.*
Israel either made or allowed this to occur–so that they could draw sympathy upon themselves, divert attention from the impending victory of gentile Christian Putin over Jewish Zelensky (bad PR for the Tribe!), and use this event as a pretext to wipe out the Palestinians.
The evidence presented thus far of an attack (fan para-gliders? really? unblocked and unnoticed truck and AFV attacks? really?) with attendant massive Israeli deaths looks suspicious and stagey–though there are probably some real Israel deaths as well. The bigwigs in Tel Aviv–and now Jerusalem–don’t mind killing (or allowing to be killed) a few of the lesser Israelis in order to advance Israeli goals of total dominion over the mid-east.
The effect of this will be to get the US to pony up even more billions for Israel (while Americans in Maui get 700 dollars for their torched homes) and allow Netanyahu to do what he has always wanted to do–genocide the Palestinians.
Also, the linking of the Palestinians to Iran will (of course) be made, and the US will now be easily induced to attack that country, especially as Biden needs a victory–since his proxy war against Russia is faring so badly.
Many Americans, including Christians are waking up however. They no longer believe the traditional 70s and 80s propaganda about dem Evil Iranians and dem Evil Ay-Rabs and dose good Israelis.
The US is a fast-fading empire. It literally does *nothing* right (see Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine). It is ruled by wicked and foolish men (and now women). But it does have, unlike Iraq, many weapons of mass destruction, and a mad beast is always dangerous.
Anyway, break out the popcorn and enjoy the Apocalyptic show! (I’m kidding, pray and make sacrifices for peace!).