From the 1998 Inside the Vatican
Special Supplement on Humanae Vitae
PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR THE FAMILY
Declaration on the Decrease of Fertility in the World
The truth about current demographic trends cannot be denied any longer. It is increasingly evident and ever more widely acknowledged that the world is engaged in a marked demographic decline, which started around the year 1968. In 51 countries, fertility is already below replacement level. The number of deaths per year is even higher than the number of births in 15 of these countries. It is urgent to increase the general knowledge of these trends. A true solidarity must be forged without delay, boldly facing the future and mindful of the Declaration of Human Rights whose 50th anniversary is commemorated this year.
1. BEING ATTENTIVE TO DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS
Meanwhile, the Pontifical Council for the Family follows with attention and interest the studies of research centres on demographic matters. Among these institutions is the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. This body convened a meeting of 14 world-renowned experts in Toronto, Canada, 4-6 November 1997, in order to study the actual worldwide decline in fertility and its foreseeable consequences for various nations in the immediate future. These experts could only confirm what all demographic data has already indicated for many years, namely, that the decrease in fertility which, for some 20 years, has affected most of the industrially developed countries--Northern and Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand--is extending to an ever greater number of developing countries, in Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. One expert, commenting on the continuity of this decline since 1975 in countries which already had a low fertility rate, remarked: "Once the fertility transition begins, further declines follow invariably".[5]
2. A COMMON VOCABULARY: WIDESPREAD, SIMPLISTIC, AND ERRONEOUS
3. DEMOGRAPHIC DECREASE AND THE AGEING OF POPULATIONS
6. CELEBRATING MAN AND HIS RIGHTS
4. Familia et Vita, Anno II, n. 1, 1997, pp. 3-137.
8. J-Cl. Chesnais, Determinants of Below-Replacement Fertility, p. 12.
16. Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Centesimus Annus, 1991, n. 39.