Erik Reuter schreef:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 09:47:33PM +1200, K. Feete wrote:
> > Ever the optimist. I wish I had my textbooks here, since as far as I
> > recall they don't agree with you.
>
> Check the CIA World Fact Book
>
> http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
>
> The (birth rate - death rate) for most 1st world countries is less
> than 1%. (2000 est.) And I didn't look up the historical data, but I'm
> guessing that it has been coming down.
>
> Just clicking on a few countries, I found 4 where the death rate exceeds
> the birth rate (Russia, Germany, Italy, and Sweden)
This is a fairly accurate view. But in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands,
The UK, France and other first world countries (that are doing rather well
economically), this way of looking at population increase doesn't take into
account the high influx of legal foreigners into the country. I remember a
discussion going on in The Netherlands of balancing population growth.
Besides the birth rates and death rates they also started taking into
account the influx of legallised foreigners. That way turning the negative
population growth figures into a positive growth a couple of years ago. This
of course put more oil on the fire of extremists. Similar discussions were
held for Germany and Belgium but were quickly put down, because of the
danger for more extremism, which is already a big problem in Germany,
Belgium and France.
Sonja
