Fertility Rate, Life Expectancy and the Solar Cycle

Source: Huffington Post

Scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim looked at the age of death of individuals born in Norway between 1676 and 1878 and compared the data to solar activity data. In addition to showing that individuals born during a solar maximum tended to die younger, the comparison showed that fertility was reduced in certain women born in years with high solar activity. In an unusual study, Norwegian scientists claim people born during periods of solar calm may live around five years longer than those born when the sun is feisty. They argue peak solar activity brings higher levels of ultraviolet radiation to Earth, which may increase infant mortality by degrading folic acid, or vitamin B9. Both of these are key to rapid cell division and growth that happens during pregnancy. The lifespan of those born in periods of solar maximum was 5.2 years shorter on average than those born during a solar minimum. High solar activity at birth decreased the probability of survival to adulthood,' thus truncating average lifespan.  

Source: Gine Roll Skjærvø, Frode Fossøy and Eivin Røskaft (2015) - Solar activity at birth predicted infant survival and women’s fertility in historical Norway. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences 282.

Demographics as Destiny

Business Insider (Nov 30, 2015) - What the size of the world's workforce will be like in a decade is well predictable, since the future workers have already been born. Demographics have long been a key determinant of potential growth rates, but the change in the global population over the next few years is unprecedented. Japan's population started to shrink in the mid-1990s and Germany's started shrinking around the year 2000, but the world's most populous country, China, is now seeing its working-age population shrink for the first time. Though the overall global population will continue to grow for some time yet, the growth of the working-age population is slowing down pretty much everywhere. That's relevant for a bundle of reasons. Around the world there will be fewer workers to support a growing number of retirees. But it also has some economists expecting significant pressure on wages.

The sea of red and pink across the advanced world means contraction, no growth,
or slow growth. Only in a belt of the developing world (in Africa particularly)
is there any substantial expansion coming by 2020. Credits: HSBC (Nov 2015)
Enlarge

If employers have to fight for a group of workers that is growing more slowly, or even declining, they will need to encourage people to move, and their labour will be more valuable. Some countries, like Japan, Russia, and parts of Europe, have already entered the stage that the rest of the world is going into — and they've struggled with it. In Japan, slowing economic growth has made the county's ever-expanding pile of public debt more and more difficult to deal with, and the working-age population has already declined by 11.1% in the past 20 years. Smaller populations mean less demand and less potential output. More retirees relative to the number of working-age people means more fiscal pressure: greater expenditure on healthcare and less tax income. Globally, although working-age populations are still growing, HSBC expects global potential growth to be 0.6ppt lower per year over the next decade compared with the past decade given these demographic changes. Not great news for heavily indebted economies (see also HERE).

The Demographic Crash of Civilizations

The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to the latest UN-World Population Report. However, the most important development of the twenty-first century is likely to be the great extinction of peoples, nations, cultures and civilizations. The so called ‘developed world’ is failing to attend to the most elementary task of any successful civilization: raising children. Civilization, culture, social harmony and economic prosperity rest upon the indispensable pre-condition of simple physical existence. The failure to reproduce renders all other achievements irrelevant. 

Prosperity, war, birth control, decadence, exploitation, austerity, abortion
and degradation reflected in the age structure of the German population 1910,
1970, 2009 and 2060 (HERE)

Take Germany for an example: The total population counts some 82 million, the current fertility rate is 1.43 and keeps declining. Out of the 82 million, some 17 million have a recent ‘immigrant background’, some 22 million are pensioners. Germany's impressive ‘work force’ still counts some 40 million, while the neoliberal gulag of the Schroeder-Merkel regime produced an impoverished human junk heap of 11 to 18 million people. Eight million adults between 18 and 65 of age are unable to sustain themselves, are either jobless or working-poor, trapped in exploitive lease labor contracts, One-Euro-Jobs, part-times jobs, mini-jobs, and other odd Hartz-schemes. Half a million Germans are homeless, many of them children. Organized slavery entertained by the remaining tax payers. The average income laborer tributes two thirds of his gross income to a ruthless government that dished out 400 billion Euro to zombie-banks, and rips-off 100 million Euro every day to pay interest for the ‘public debt’. In this environment around 650,000 children are born each year (one third with 'immigrant background'), as compared to 840,000 yearly deaths, giving an annual shortfall of about 200,000. In other words, while over-aging and impoverishing dramatically, Germany loses the equivalent of a mid-sized city each and every year. In fact official German projections indicate that the total population will shrink to between 65 and 74 million by 2060, depending on annual net migration of 100,000 to 400,000. Obviously, the derailed reproduction of the natives (one out of three women never bears children; some 200,000 abortions every year; several hundred thousand homosexuals; etc.), along with genocidal immigration policies, population reduction and population replacement will essentially extinguish the historic German nation within this century. This general trend and time frame equally apply to almost all other European nations.

The all season disaster recipe from the Pentagon's cookbook:
NATO-engineered regime changes and civil wars, stimulated mass migration and
ensuing colonization of global venture lumpen-proletariat and refugees amongst
30 million jobless and 120 million poor native Europeans (HERE + HERE + HERE)

Today the global average fertility rate is 2.3, and 80% of the world population lives in countries where women have on average fewer than 3 children. This means the global fertility rate is barely higher than the replacement fertility, and the increase of the world population is primarily due to the increasing length of life. In 1960 China’s fertility rate was 6.1. Now it has dropped to 1.6. In Iran, the fertility rate in 1985 was 6.3; now it is down to 1.9. In Thailand, the fertility rate was 6.14 in 1955, 3.92 in 1985, and is 1.49 today. The problem with the ‘developed world’ is not only that it is broke but that it is old and barren. Fertility rates are mostly way below replacement levels, many nations are over-aged and have reached the demographic point of no return. Globally the lowest fertility rates occur in the most modernized areas of Asia: China (1.55), Japan (1.40), South Korea (1.25), Taiwan (1.11), Hong Kong (1.04), Macau (0.91), and Singapore (0.80). Extinction level rates are also prevalent among Southern European countries and former Soviet states: Portugal (1.52), Spain (1.48), Italy (1.42), Greece (1.41), Poland (1.33), Ukraine (1.30), etc.

In Africa, children under age 15 account for 41% of the population in 2015 and young persons aged 15 to 24 for a further 19%. Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia, which have seen greater declines in fertility, have smaller percentages of children (26 and 24 %) and similar percentages of youth (17 and 16%). In total, these three regions are home to 1.7 billion children and 1.1 billion young persons in 2015.
 

Source: UN DESA

Source: CIA World Factbook

Source: CIA World Factbook