Russia faces population crisis as death rate soars

[bin.dare]

A tiny birthrate, alcoholism, smoking and lethal violence meant the number of Russians who died in 2004 outstripped the number born at a pace that could spell disaster for the future of the world's biggest country.

State Statistics Committee figures released today showed that the Russian death rate exceeded the birth rate by 50 per cent or three deaths for every two births. The population fell half a per cent over 2004 to 143.5 million. Only a decade ago, 148 million people lived in Russia.

"You cannot say that the demographic crisis has ended, the death rate is still very unfavourable," said Mr Boris Revich, of the Demography and Human Ecology Centre at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Official projections suggest Russia's population could be as low as 100 million by 2050.

Neighbouring China's population is projected to be above 1.4 billion. "The population is falling a lot faster than in the West above all because of the high death rate, which is caused by so-called external causes - drinking, smoking, traffic accidents and of course murder," Mr Revich said.

The fall has been driven by poor healthcare, which has been underfunded since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and an insubstantial birth rate. Alcoholism and heavy smoking pushed male life expectancy to 15 years less than that of an American male.

(more)
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2005/0126/breaking50.htm

[tom_paine]

1. Look at Russia today if you want to see Amerika 2020

They are both BushPutinist States.

[Bono71]

13. My guess is this has been a problem for many years, not just

since the fall of communism. When I visited Russia for the first time in 1988, we took our own needles and blood supply in case we had an accident (no one trusted the hospitals in Moskva).

[makhno]

46. That's pretty paranoid of you

As a foreigner, you would've gotten into a decent hospital had anything happened, unless you were going into some remote part of the country, which you weren't in '88.

I don't know anyone who takes their own "blood supply" on trips to Russia, now as then. Is that for a specific condition, like hemophilia or something? It sounds pretty wild.

You're right about the problem not being new however. Life expectancy peaked in the mid-sixties and has been going downhill since then. The '80s and '90s saw an acceleration of the decline, however.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

30. UPENN Study ranks US 27th in social progress due to mass poverty.

The study says that US progress in meeting people's needs stopped in 1980 under Ray Gun.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/uop-ur2071703.php

"Using data provided primarily by national governments to the United Nations and the World Bank, Estes's study measures the ability of nations to meet the needs of their residents for health, education, human rights, political participation, population growth, improved women's status, cultural diversity and freedom from "social chaos." Military spending and environmental protection are also among the 40 factors used to tabulate his Weighted Index of Social Progress."

[mr_hat]

2. Also heavily affected by the "bride drain."

[musiclawyer]

4. In my very small, remote town there are at least half a dozen

brides from the former soviet union. They are all young, pretty and sharp. All very productive citizens. Not housewives sitting at home waiting for their husbands. Multiply these numbers accordingly, and you see how a lot of Russian guys( and the economy itself) back in the old country must be lonely and miserable.

[barb162]

5. those guys can be lonely and miserable but they drove the women

out of Russia with their neanderthal behavior

[DulceDecorum]

9. China is in dire straits

as we speak,
due to discarding female infants at birth.

[barb162]

14. they are still doing it a lot there from what I understand. The ones

lucky enough to end up in orphanages are not fed and die by starvation

[barb162]

17. if they reduce their population to a more manageable level they will

be better off. I am disgusted, though, with their "throwing away" of female infants.

[jdj]

21. a friend has adopted two Chinese girls, two of the brightest

and most adorable kids you've ever seen.

One of my favorite quotes from her kids was when the older girl, now 7 was helping make the dinner and described her pasta as "stubborn and uncooperative."

How anyone could fail to love these kids is beyond me.

I would hope they would find conscience to make use of pre-natal gender testing. Death by starvation is a horrendous way to die.

Of course I'm sure pro-lifers would much prefer letting them starve to aborting them in the first trimester.

[DulceDecorum]

26. It is very very sad

to see that almost every society throws away some of its children.
What you are discussing is gender and timing.

In Western hospitals, people are often starved to death.
They call this "withholding nutritive therapy."
Many of those who are treated in this manner are those who have significant mental or physical disabilities.

I am not really in favor of pre-natal gender testing and selective abortion.
As a matter of fact, most days of the week I am plain not in favor of any abortion and especially not the reasons why society causes them to become a necessity of life.
I think though, that it is VERY difficult to stand by and watch an infant starve and I really do think that an infant has a much better chance of survival once someone sees it and beings to love it.

Incidentally,
just in case you didn't know it,
payback is a bitch
for the both the living, and the dead.
http://www.8bm.com/diatribes/volume02/diatribes009/diatribes168-188/diatribes172.htm

[barb162]

34. Actually the Chinese, from the report I was watching, said they

really "need" to have a son in the rural areas of that society to be acceptable so if you have a girl or two, they usually get thrown on the roadside and I guess they usually get eaten by wild animals. BBC or another British TV outfirt sneaked some camera eqquipment into the Chinese orphanages and showed these baby girls tied up and not allowed to move and starving to death. The older kids in the orphanages were tormenting these babies. It was on Oprah WInfrey and she was interviewing these camera people and reporters trying to expose this sick situation.


I would prefer pre-natal gender testing and selective abortion compared to what I saw in this report. I think even now in Chinese society there are more men than women. But there is such a strong preference for male children in certainly the rural areas and probably the cities that even now they don't seem to be overcoming this tradition of killing the females

[MADem]

47. The odd thing about the Chinese fixation with boy babies

...is that they are going to grow up, and with a shortage of lovely young women in their peer group, be ready to marry that ole granma down the road, they'll be so damn horny...

It is already happening in India. The 'lower caste' (what bullshit) gals are 'marrying up' and the ugly ducklings of the 'upper castes' who would previously be consigned to taking care of elders are landing the hot boys and the parents can dicker over the dowry amounts.

I swear, when China invades America, they'll be wanting to reclaim all of those lovely young ladies that they threw away because of their silly prejudices. Hide your adopted girls, the Chinese are coming!!!!

Amazing how fellows devalue women, until they want to get busy.....then women are the MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE.

Ah, Darwin!!!!

[Demeter]

23. And Instead, the Russian women ended up with

American Neanderthals, a green card, liberal divorce laws, opportunities for work and education,....not a bad trade.

[girl gone mad]

25. Did they?

I thought poverty was the driving force.

I had a male Russian friend in college who was relentlessly pursued by dozens of Russian women. He told me they believed everyone living in the USA drove a Mercedes and lived in a mansion. Behavior really didn't seem to enter into the equation (or looks, or anything else for that matter).

[theboss]

3. Didn't Pat Buchanan do a book on this?

Actually, thesis of the book was interesting. It would be nice if it was not wrapped up in Buchanan's usual racist, xenophobic, paranoid rhetoric. But falling birthrates in the West are going to have an interesting impact on the world over the next 100 years.

[oneighty]

6. In my heart I believe

powers that be in our country want the birth rate to rise. It is their real reason for being anti-abortion, anti-birth control and anti-women's rights.

Yes.

180

[havocmom]

7. Agree. A lot of white guys with old money know they owe it to exploiting

brown people. They figure if the birth rate for 'their kind' keeps dropping, paybacks are gonna be a real problem for them. Gotta keep those future security guards for their gated communities coming up through the ranks. That is why they appease the angry white male and feed his anger; gotta make sure there are human buffers between the white elite and righteous justice on a global scale.

[Flaxbee]

18. and, the more poor there are, the more kids they've got

for the military. Breeding canon fodder.

[DulceDecorum]

8. Trouble is

the sperm counts in Europe and America have been dropping,
and no amount of Viagra is going to counteract that.
http://www.drmirkin.com/archive/6451.html

This is creating a global minority rule situation.

Reading 8. WHAT IS N.S.S.M. 200...? And why do Western Leaders care so much about population control?
http://www.africa2000.com/INDX/nssm200.htm

Here we get to one of the primary documents of the population debate, a summary of the infamous 1974 National Security Study Memorandum - NSSM 200 - the Nixon-Kissinger, NSC, CIA, Pentagon, USAID guidance document on population control and the U.S. political interests. This reading provides excepts from the memo; it shows, in brief, that the purpose of pursing a policy of population control was to serve the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interest at the expense of the developing countries.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/population_readings.htm

[happyslug]

11. Sperm Count can be affected by environmental factors

Such as the numbers of males around. The first study on male sperm count was taken in NYC sometime in the 1960s, than another count of male sperm was done in the early 1990s but this time world wide (Just before the time of the report you cite). The results? Sperm count drop from the 1960s to the 1990s. The problem with the report was men in areas of a lot of other men (i.e. a City, like NYC where the first test were done) have higher sperm counts than men in rural areas with many less males around. Why the difference? No one knows except male sperm count goes up as the number of fellow males a man comes in contact with.

The cause of this sperm increase probably has to do with evolution. Chimpanzee has testicles twice as large as a Human Male. Gorilla have very small testicles (Gorillas evolutionary path having diverged from Chimpanzees and Humans while before Humans and Chimpanzees paths diverged).

Why do Gorillas have small testicles and Chimpanzee have large ones? The best explanation is that Gorillas do NOT "share" females. One male controls an area and he has sex with any female in his area he wants to have sex with (provided she wants to have sex with him). Chimpanzee on the other hand lives in "Bands" of related males. Each of these males have the chance to have sex with any females in the band's territory. Thus you not only have males competing for territory but you also have sperm of different males trying to beat each other to impregnate the female. The more sperm the more likely that males sperm will impregnate the female. This is referred to a "Sperm Competition".

As I noted above the Human Males testicles are half way between Gorillas and Chimpanzee in Size, which implies that at some time such "Sperm Competition" occurred among human ancestors, but since Man's testicles are 1/2 the size of Chimpanzee something stopped man from continuing on that path of evolution. Since the larger testicles did NOT cause men any harm man retained his larger testicles

Remember Evolution is based on survival of the Fitness NOT the largest, strongest or who produce the most sperm. The development of the Pair-Bond probably did in Sperm competition among Humans, but just because man moved from that evolutionary path does not mean all of the effects of that path disappeared when man diverged from that path. Remember the theory of Evolution requires fitness, a change is not always an "improvement". If something exists in a person and its causes him no harm and provides no help either, it stays in the human gene pool for if you do not have it, that fact does not make you more "fit". Thus sperm competition probably does not cause man any real disadvantage so it survived the development of the Pair-Bond (On the other hand larger testicles did not give a man a better chance of impregnating a woman so the path to larger testicles just stopped.

Given the above (and the fact you only need ONE SPERM to get a female pregnant) the drop in sperm is meaningless. Furthermore the drop is best explained in the terms of retention of the effects of the evolutionary path of Sperm Competition that man diverged from when Humans adopted the path of the Pair-bond. This drop in sperm count is a red herring that should be avoided for it is the result of the change of our environment, the environmental change being going from living in rural areas to urban areas.

[fedsron2us]

12. Birth rates are dropping around the globe.

The only exceptions appear to be sub Saharan Africa (where high fertility rates barely compensate for the ravages of AIDS on the population) and some parts of the Middle East. Although Europe is usually regarded as the area facing the most immediate demographic crisis it is countries such as China that potentially face the fastest and most dramatic shift in their populations age profile in the next 100 years.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_05/b3918011.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4208479.stm

edit for links

[barb162]

16. I am scanning this stuff and I wonder how many people this planet

can support. For example, just in this country, are there too many people in this country now? Should people be living in desert regions like Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc. while Lake Mead, other reservoirs and the SW USA is possibly in a long term drought? Should people be living on coasts especially if there is global warming and the seas will rise?

[superconnected]

22. I always rember an analogy about overpopulation

it was,

if the worlds was a pond, and the population were a moss that grows on top of the pond, and that moss doubled everday, then the day before the whole pond would be taken over, only half the pond was taken over by the moss. And the day before that, only 1/4 of the pond had the moss.

it's about the world population doubling every 10-15 years. I can't remember the exact number of years the population keeps doubling....I'm guessing it was 10-15.

[barb162]

35. great analogy! Sometimes I think we are at the day before the pond

is overwhelmed by the moss. We are wiping out other species so fast, we are destroying forests worldwide, etc., we are using everything up. When that hurricane went through Haiti, it was way worse because the people took all the trees down for firewood. Then the hills were washing out and killing a lot of people. On the other side of that island in the Dominican Republic, they keep the trees and there was not that much damage, comparatively speaking.

Yeah everybody should just keep breeding as fast as they can.

[DulceDecorum]

29. The US is very very wasteful

and if people are going to live like that then the world is way overpopulated.

However,
if people are ready to live like they do in Finland
then there is room for many millions more.

Also, the US model is based on oppression.
Hence the immense federal deficit
and the need to militarily intimidate the rest of the planet.
Once the plantation masters kill off most of the slaves,
then they are going to lose their way of life.

As we speak, soldiers returning from Iraq are finding themselves unable to reproduce normally due to the chromosome damage they have sustained from working with Depleted Uranium ordinance and tanks.
The factories that make DU munitions are closing due to the workers getting strange cancers. The areas around such factories are almost all designated as Superfund sites due the heavy and toxic contamination of anything that ever touched the Depleted Uranium.
Even civilians are turning with strange illnesses formerly known only to US/UK warriors and the hapless people of Iraq.

The men who fought in the Gulf War, they are excreting uranium in their semen; they call it 'burning semen' and their wives notice it too. Now what’s in the semen? The genes for all future generations.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s580857.htm

[barb162]

37. "room for many millions more" ??? I'd like to see zero population

growth or a slight negative rate the entire world over. Every country! There's too many people on this planet and homo sapiens is causing global warming, pollution, etc.

Instead of looking to make the next million tracts of open land a housing development or business park, make it a woodland park. Lots of trees, keep it natural, let the animals enjoy it. Please, fewer humans...we are screwing this planet up so fast.

[DulceDecorum]

45. Zero population growth in the G8

is something truly worth aiming for.

Negative population growth in the G8,
aka Utopia,
is almost too much to ask for.

[barb162]

20. right now there are way more people on this planet

who are poverty-stricken, in subsistence level existence, than those in industrialized economies. Who is ruling and who has been ruling for the last 100 or so years?

[hector459]

10. Now there is where the worlds BIGGEST oil reserves are.

Hard to get at but there nonetheless. If they could only come up with a way to pump it out, the reserves there are larger than anywhere else.

[lovuian]

15. This is a fascinating study on how to Exterminate your nation

When Putin wakes up there may no people in Russia!!!

[superconnected]

24. wouldn't that be sort of like bush waking up?

I don't believe it can happen.

[MisterP]

19. privatization and deregulation: the gift that keeps on giving;

Hail Yeltsin! Heil Thatcher!

[Megahurtz]

27. Those poor people don't even have

heat for their homes. So they drink lots of vodka.

[LiberalEsto]

28. Russia is also a huge environmental disaster

due to the Chernobyl accident and all the uncontrolled pollution emitted by the nation's manufacturing plants. That's affecting fertility in men and in women.

[LisaL]

39. Chernobyl is not in Russia.

It's in Ukraine.

[sweetheart]

42. The part i seen was a real messssss

St. Petersburg city center is just run down, but nothing too bad... but
when you get towards the docks, its a toxic waste dump of unbelievable
proportions. I can only imagine the amount of money it would take to
clean such a mess up, and russia just does not have it, or the priority.

Worse still, with a dictator and a crap government, russia can't get
decent immigrants, so the brain drain is total, and nobody is left to
keep the place afloat. There is a strong likelihood that russia will
break up totally in the coming decades, with the east going towards
china... and the south going towards greater islamic whatnot, whilst
the remaining part just stagnates... its such a mess, whomever is in
charge of russia is already in debt for the mess... only a massive
shift towards liberal democracy could save russia... that all the
brain drain it has driven abroad over the years consider a reverse
migration as the bush brownshirts come to power... that the irony be
that russia become a serious pole in the remaining free world.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

31. we are unindated with russians buying everything (all houses and land)....

in my rural upstate NY community...hundreds have moved here from mainly Moscow...they must have known something was about to give over there.

[barb162]

38. where are they getting the money? I thought they were so poor there

[ElsewheresDaughter]

48. some from the US money sent to buy and secure the nukes...stolen $$$

and many of them are russian mafia ...a scary bunch

[Chicago Democrat]

32. They all moved next door to me!

Russians are everywhere! Dour mostly but capable of great fun.

[barb162]

40. Chicago too? Okay, you talk to any of them? Where are they getting

the money to come here?

[DulceDecorum]

44. From the Bank of New York.

The emergence of money laundering linked to accounts at the Bank of New York has set alarm bells ringing but the Russian mafia is not a localised operation concerned with petty protection rackets - it's a sophisticated business with tentacles stretching across continents.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/434691.stm

[Rockerdem]

33. Nearly all European nations need immigration to stay afloat

Canada too. The birthrates among the native demographic is below the magic 2.1 per couple reproduction rate. Thats just the way it is.

[BadGimp]

36. Whatever is in the water..

..bottle it and ship it to the Red States.

ok that was mean and totally uncalled for :evilgrin:

shame on me :dunce:

[barb162]

41. yeah, it's mean but I am laughing. I guess shame on me too but

I am still giggling. Start with Utah and the polygamists in those hills

[Jack_DeLeon]

43. So whats the problem?

other than economics.

Our social security system certainly wouldnt survivie a declining population, but the world in general would be better off with less people fucking with it.