On Sunday, Duncan Garner faced a torrent of abuse, including being labelled a racist, following a column calling for New Zealand to curb immigration.

Winston Peters and his party, NZ First, want to cut the number of people coming into the country - with their policy likely to be on the table in coalition negotiations this week.

And as the attention on immigration fuels fierce debate online, we decided to put some of the common claims made by politicians and social commentators under the microscope.

New Zealand's migrant community is growing faster than ever

This year's net gain of migrants was 72,000, and New Zealand's population grew by 100,400 to the June 2017 year.

Stats NZ produces population projections ranging from low to high, depending on different rates of fertility, mortality and migration.

The medium projection - considered to be the most plausible - is for the population to be 5.5 million by 2038.

The 6.3m figure is the 'high' projection and assumes there is high fertility rates, low mortality rates and high net migration. Under the 'low' projection the population would rise to 4.8m by 2038.

A population growth rate of 2.1 per cent made us the 59th fastest growing country in the world in 2016. Most of the countries with faster rates of growth are in Africa.

New Zealand does have the fastest rate of population growth amongst the OECD countries we generally measure ourselves against. Only Ireland (2.04 per cent) comes close.

Too many migrants cuts local wages

Not according to Hayden Glass, an economist and co-author of Going Places, a book about the economic contribution of migration to and from New Zealand.

"It's often talked about that immigration has an effect on wages, which makes sense as migrants increase supply," said Glass.

"But when you look at the economic evidence … we found that it does not impact local wages

How could this be? While they add to the labour supply, migrants also increase the demand, he said. Continue reading

Sources

• Stuff article by Andy Fyers and Brad Flahive
• Image: Franchise New Zealand

He believes Samoa needs a bigger population.

So he is encouraging people to have more children to increase the population and among other things to provide "fast and strong boys for Manu Samoa."

He said he wonders who the idiot who came up with the idea of family planning.

"You know doctors; most of them have more children than most of us. There is that saying that goes like, 'Do as I say and not as I do'."

Tuilaepa says couples are prioritising their work rather than making babies to increase the population. He believes this should change.

"For example, if you married in your early twenties, then you should have at least ten children."

He said having many children has lots of benefits... "when you are old and crippled, at least you will have a lot of children to give you your cigarette and massage you."

Earlier this month, Tuilaepa also commented on this issue blaming the roles reversal in married couples.

He said because women now have better paid career jobs than men, the population of Samoa is growing slowly.

"The fact of the matter is that, most of the Universities graduates we have now are women. Therefore, they have better jobs and high salaries than men."

"This has resulted in women going to work while men stay at home and take care of the children."

The prime minister's comments have drawn some sharp responses.

Source

• samoaobserver.ws
• Image: radionz.co.nz

Data from the Vatican's Central Office for Church Statistics show that the Church in Europe grew by two percent between 2005 and 2014.

Although 40 percent of the continent is Catholic, that figure has not changed in nearly a decade, the report noted.

The same report revealed that the number of baptized Catholics around the world has already reached 1.27 billion or 17.8 percent of the global population, an increase of 157 million.

It means that the Church is growing at a faster rate than that of the world's population on every continent apart from Oceania.

Highest growth of the number of baptized Catholics was seen in Africa, where Catholics increased by 41 percent, followed by Asia, where the Church grew by 20 percent.

The percentage of baptized Catholics as part of the general population remains highest in North and South America where they "make up almost half" of the world's Catholics, the report said.

"It is a great joy that the number of Catholics and the number of vocations continue to increase, especially in Africa and Asia," said Father Fernando Domingues, head of the vocations branch of the Church's mission charity, Missio, in Rome.

The priest, however, noted that the number of priests is still disproportionate to the needs of the local Catholic community.

Sources

National Catholic Register
Christian Today
Breitbart.Com
The Tablet
Image: Breitbart.Com

The latest data on world population from the U.N. Population Division reveals a number of trends that seem to indicate otherwise.

The following is PRI's brief overview of some of the findings from the recently released 2015 Revision of the World Population Prospects.

According to the U.N. Population Division, world population is estimated to be 7.3 billion today. That number is expected to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.

In the past two and a half decades, world population has increased by 2 billion people.

Yet despite the rapid rise in world population, the percentage of people living with hunger in developing countries has actually dropped from 24% to 14% over the same time period.

Welcoming another 4 billion to the human family does not appear to necessitate a demographic catastrophe.

In fact, the future appears to be quite bright for future generations, especially in poorer and less developed nations. Infant and childhood mortality are set to decline sharply worldwide.

By 2100, the rate of deaths among children under the age of five will fall as much as 82% in less developed nations and 80% in the world's least developed countries.

Future generations will also have significantly longer lifespans to look forward to.

World average life expectancy at birth in the early 1950's was 48 years for women and 45 for men. Today those numbers are 73 for women and 68 for men.

By 2100, life expectancy at birth will have risen to almost 85 for women and 82 for men worldwide and even higher in developed nations—92 years for women.

The challenges of the 21st century, rather than stemming from overpopulation, appear to arise from falling fertility rates and larger aging cohorts with comparatively fewer from younger cohorts to support them.

By 2100, potential dependents (adults over 65 and dependents under 20) in high and upper-middle income countries will constitute half of the total population, up from about 37% today. Continue reading

Sources

• Population Research Institute article written by Jonathan Abbamonte.
• Image: Human Populations

The initiative in the parish in Staggia Senese in Tuscany is aimed at helping local people have larger families.

But the offer comes with strings attached.

To qualify for the baby bonus, couples must already have at least two children, have been married in a church, be residents of Staggia and they must be Italian.

The bonus money is given to parents on the day of the child's Baptism.

Since the start of the year, four families have already been granted the cash.

Parish priest Fr Stefano Bimbi hopes to extend the offer to non-Italian families soon.

The parish has appealed for more contributions.

The money would give "concrete support during difficult economic times to families with the courage to accept the gift of a child", the priest said

The town of Staggia has just over 2000 people and the bonus is a way of incentivising residents to have larger families.

"The parish economic board voted unanimously in favour of the initiative," Ansa reported Fr Bimbi as saying.

"We don't have a huge amount of money but the 'baby bonus' will continue until funds run out," he added.

The financial incentive follows a similar initiative by the Italian government, which promised low-income families NZ$135 a month for each child under 3 years old.

Italy's population growth is almost zero, due to a low national birth-rate.

At the end of 2014, the number of births in the year minus the number of deaths gave a negative balance of almost 100,000, Italy's worst level since World War One.

There were almost 12,000 fewer births in 2014 than in the previous year.

At the end of 2014, Italy's population was 60,795,612.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• The Local.IT
• The Local.IT
• The Telegraph
• Image: Hormonal Harmony

Sketching a dystopian world in which too many people scrambled for too few resources, the book became the basis for a 1973 film about a hellish future, "Soylent Green."

In 1969, the pop duo Zager and Evans reached the top of the charts with a number called "In the Year 2525," which postulated that humans were on a clear path to doom.

No one was more influential — or more terrifying, some would say — than Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist. His 1968 book, "The Population Bomb," sold in the millions with a jeremiad that humankind stood on the brink of apocalypse because there were simply too many of us.

Dr. Ehrlich's opening statement was the verbal equivalent of a punch to the gut: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over." He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair "England will not exist in the year 2000."

Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that "sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come." By "the end," he meant "an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity."

As you may have noticed, England is still with us. So is India. Hundreds of millions did not die of starvation in the '70s. Humanity has managed to hang on, even though the planet's population now exceeds seven billion, double what it was when "The Population Bomb" became a best-seller and its author a frequent guest of Johnny Carson's on "The Tonight Show." How the apocalyptic predictions fell as flat as ancient theories about the shape of the Earth is the focus of this installment ofRetro Report, a series of video documentaries examining significant news stories of the past and their aftermath. Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times
• Image: Trends Magazine

Life has remained unchanged in Wallis and Futuna for centuries, its young people are packing their bags and leaving the islands' tropical shores forever, driven away by a lack of opportunities and little prospect of reform, the report says.

In the last 10 years the population has declined by a fifth, with emigration exacerbated by a falling birth rate.

There are now double the number of expatriate islanders living in New Caledonia, its nearest sister territory, than on Wallis and Futuna.

The trio of monarchs are beneficiaries of the French state, paid a generous monthly salary to perpetuate Polynesian customs that have merged with strong Catholic beliefs since the arrival of Christianity in the mid-19th century — but discontentment is growing.

Kapeliele Faupala, King of Uvea (Wallis), was removed from the throne by village elders in September.

His rule over the larger and more populated Wallis island led to resentment over his allegedly autocratic style and seeming disinterest in the job.

The Church is responsible for islanders' primary-level education, in contrast to metropolitan France where state education is separated from religious institutions by law.

The construction of a gigantic church on Wallis drew criticism from villagers, who told AFP in October costs ran to millions of dollars partly drawn from private donations, leaving some in debt as a result.

Although the project, supported by the vicar general, has sparked controversy in the population, given its cost, the goal is also to make a pilgrimage site.

"Cette église est un peu démesurée, mais maintenant qu'elle est là il faut la prendre en compte", reconnait Monseigneur Ghislain de Rasilly, évêque de l'archipel.

"L'idée est de faire de Futuna un centre de pèlerinage dans le Pacifique, qui devrait être opérationnel en 2015", explique à l'AFP de Rasilly.

"Je ne m'attends pas à voir débarquer 10.000 personnes. Les pèlerins viendront essentiellement de Wallis et Futuna, de Nouvelle-Calédonie et de Fidji", poursuit-il, conscient de l'enclavement de ce territoire français, le plus éloigné de la métropole avec 22.000 km de distance.

Situé au beau milieu du Pacifique sud, Wallis et ses 8.600 habitants sont reliés deux fois par semaine par une seule compagnie aérienne avec Fidji et Nouméa.

"Il est envisagé de mettre en place une desserte maritime entre les deux îles, mais le quai de Futuna ne sera pas construit avant 2018 ou 2019", s'inquiète l'évêque. (Automated English translation available)

Source

• MailOnline
• france24.com
• Image: The Daily Mail

Africans "have come of age", said Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama, who is president of the Nigerian bishops' conference.

"We should be allowed to think for ourselves," he said, noting that many African countries have been independent from former colonial powers for many decades.

"We are wooed by economic things," said Archbishop Kaigama, who heads Nigeria's Jos archdiocese.

"We are told if you limit your population, we're going to give you so much. And we tell them, 'Who tells you that our population is overgrown?' "

The archbishop said Nigeria recently" had a big conference on pro-life issues, and in that conference, we came out very clearly to ascertain the fact that life is sacred, marriage is sacred, and the family has dignity".

"We get international organisations, countries, and groups which like to entice us to deviate from our cultural practices, traditions, and even our religious beliefs.

"And this is because of their belief that their views should be our views. Their opinions and their concept of life should be ours," he said.

"Now you come to tell us about reproductive rights, and you give us condoms and artificial contraceptives.

"Those are not the things we want. We want food, we want education, we want good roads, regular light, and so on. Good health care."

Archbishop Kaigama said poverty is not necessarily about money.

"One can be poor in spirituality, poor in ideas, poor in education, and in many other ways. We may be poor materially, but we are not poor in every sense.

"So we say no to what we think is wrong. And [the] time has gone when we would just follow without question.

"Now, we question. We evaluate. We decide. We ask questions. This is what we do in Africa now," he concluded.

Archbishop Kaigama later told reporters that the prelates are not looking to change specific Church doctrines.

"What we are trying to examine is the pastoral approach that could be done differently," he continued.

In an interview with LifeSiteNews before the synod, Archbishop Kaigama said that if the proper understanding of marriage and family is taken away, then society will collapse.

"Our African values are God-given, and, where they do not contradict the Gospel values, we uphold them - that is the essence of inculturation," he said.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter (Archbishop Kaigama's speech)
• National Catholic Reporter
• LifeSiteNews
• Image: Contra Culture

The baby girl was given a cake, infant clothes and other gifts by health and population commission officers.

She is the daughter of Dailin Cabigayan, a resident of Sampaloc, Manila.

Baby Chonalyn is one of 100 babies born in state hospitals all over the Philippines who received the symbolic designation of "100,000,000th baby".

They all received similar gifts.

The Philippines government will monitor each of the designated 100 children as they grow up to see if they are receiving health services.

Chonalyn's father, 45-year-old van driver Clemente Sentino, said he was grateful for the government aid, but expressed confidence he could support his child and his partner.

He and the child's mother are not yet married.

"She just happened to get pregnant. But we do have plans to get married," he told Agence France-Presse.

Fr Melvin Castro, head of the commission on family and life of the country's Catholic bishops, was quoted by a church-run radio station as praising the growing population, as there would be more "young workers" to power the economy.

The United Nations Population Fund said the milestone offers both challenges and opportunities to the Philippines.

It is the world's 12th most populous country and has one of Asia's fastest-growing populations.

"It is important to emphasise that population is not merely a matter of numbers, but of human rights and opportunities," said Klaus Beck, the UNPF's Philippines representative.

With 54 per cent of its population under the age of 25, the Philippines needs to provide the young with education, job opportunities and skills, Beck said.

Unmet need for reproductive health care, especially voluntary family planning, remains great in the Philippines, Mr Beck added.

About a quarter of the population lives in poverty.

In April, after a Supreme Court ruling, a reproductive health law providing universal access to family planning services was able to be implemented.

The measure had been opposed by the Philippines' Catholic bishops because it gave access to contraception.

Sources

• The Guardian
• PhilStar
• The Rappler
• Image: The Guardian

According to L'Osservatore Romano, 11,000 Catholics in the north Atlantic nation are served by eight priests and 40 religious, many of whom are young.

Continue reading

More than half the world's population—now lives in societies where the fertility rate has been dropping, like a stone in some places, for decades. Among demographers, the prevailing narrative for this sea change in human affairs talks of economic development finished off by cultural change. As countries grow wealthier and more urban, with higher levels of education for women, as well as men, women naturally wish to have fewer children; add in access to safe and effective means to that end—contraception and abortion—and that's precisely what they do.

True enough, but not the whole truth, argues Harvard demographer Michael Teitelbaum, co-author (with Yale historian Jay Winter) of The Global Spread of Fertility Decline. At the core of the change, Teitelbaum believes, lies the rational belief of young adults—especially the highly educated, those most aware of the weak points in their society's institutions—that they live in "risk societies." The risks they see can reach to the apocalyptic (will there be another Chernobyl, another 9/11, how many more Lac-Mégantics?) to macroeconomic pessimism (can today's social welfare entitlements last?) to individual concerns(will we ever be able to own a house?). Marriage- and child-aversion are among their risk-management strategies. Continue reading

Sources

• MacLean's
• Image: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

With Catholicism losing ground especially among the young and city-dwellers, only 46 per cent of the population of Rio de Janeiro — the city that will host the Pope — now identifies as Catholic.

"Between 1970 and 2000, the share of the population that identifies as Catholic fell even though the number of Catholics in the country rose," said the report from the Pew Research Center.

"But in the most recent decade, from 2000 to 2010, both the absolute number and the percentage of Catholics declined. Brazil's Catholic population fell slightly from 125 million in 2000 to 123 million a decade later, dropping from 74 per cent to 65 per cent of the country's total population."

The report shows that the Catholic Church has been challenged by the continuing ascent of Protestant churches, particularly the fast-growing Pentecostal denominations, an accelerating secularism and religious indifference, and even a rise in "spiritism".

Between 1970 and 2010 the number of Brazilians with no religious affiliation jumped from less than 1 million to 15 million.

Pew researchers found that the number of Brazilian Protestants, conversely, continued to grow in the most recent decade, rising from 26 million in 2000 to 42 million (22 per cent of the population) in 2010.

Membership of Pentecostal churches more than doubled between 1991 and 2010.

Pew said the main factor in the growth of Protestantism in Brazil appeared to be religious switching, or movement from one religious group to another. A 2006 Pew survey of Brazilian Pentecostals suggested that 45 per cent had converted from Catholicism.

Catholicism has been the country's dominant religious tradition since the era of Portuguese colonisation in the 16th century.

Brazil has about 400 Catholic bishops, nearly 11,000 parishes and about 13,000 diocesan priests. There are roughly 483,000 catechists and 11,500 seminarians.

Sources:

America

National Catholic Reporter

Image: Urban Christian News

These Asian giants have not been alone. In much of Europe, North America, East Asia and elsewhere, the average number of children born to women during the course of their childbearing years has fallen to unprecedentedly low levels.

Our new book, The Global Spread of Fertility Decline: Population, Fear, and Uncertainty (Yale University Press, 2013) analyzes these trends and the demographic, political and economic consequences and uncertainties as low fertility has become a global phenomenon. Like other facets of globalization, low fertility rates are by no means universal: High fertility persists in sub-Saharan Africa and in parts of the Middle East, but elsewhere low fertility is more the rule than the exception. These underlying trends in childbearing mean that in the near future the rate of population growth both in Europe and Asia are likely to decline. The world is not on a path of unrestrained demographic growth, as some believe. People all over the world have hit the brakes.

Thirty years ago only a small fraction of the world's population lived in the few countries with fertility rates substantially below the "replacement level" - the rate at which the fertility of a hypothetical cohort of women would exactly replace itself in the next generation - normally set at 2.1 children per woman for populations with low mortality conditions. Fast forward to 2013, with roughly 60 percent of the world's population living in countries with such below-replacement fertility rates. Continue reading

Sources

• YaleGlobal Online
• Image: The Economist

And in Jerusalem there were 27,000 Christians in 1948, but today there are only 5000, according to Professor Hanna Issa, professor of international law and secretary-general of the Islamic-Christian Committee for the Protection of Jerusalem and the Holy Places.

The drastic decrease of the percentage of the Christian presence in the Holy Land is due to emigration and to the population growth rates of Christians being much lower than those recorded in the Muslim majority component of the Palestinian population, Professor Issa told the Fides news service.

According to Father Manuel Musallam, a longtime parish priest in Gaza and now with the foreign relations department of the Fatah political party, where he is in charge of relations with the Christian communities, serious action is needed to deal with the political, economic and social factors that encourage the flight of Christians from the Holy Land.

Christians emigrate to seek new prospects for work and study, and to raise a family, Father Musallam said.

"From Gaza and other areas," he says, "people go away for lack of minimum requirements to guarantee a dignified existence."

In Jerusalem, many were persuaded to sell their homes because they received high offers that were enough to ensure the transfer of the whole family to some Western country, where they would have a higher standard of living.

Father Musallam called on the Palestinian Authority to put in place measures to support a permanent Christian presence in the Holy Land.

He said Christians need protection of the right to education for students, access to the labour market and the possibility of establishing a home for new families.

Source:

Fides

Image: Seetheholyland

The doctors' predicament came to light during a "Faith in the Life of Medical Professionals" workshop organised by the Catholic Bishops' Commission for Healthcare and the Association of Catholic Doctors.

Birth control has been heavily encouraged in Bangladesh, a country of more than 152 million people, since the 1990s, reported the Catholic news agency UCA News.

The agency said abortion is illegal unless the life of the mother is deemed to be in danger, but doctors say it is common.

Dr June Jacqueline Gomes, one of the Catholic doctors at the workshop, said turning away a woman who wants an abortion means the patient will never return to her practice, so few of the country's 90 Catholic doctors dare to refuse to perform one.

Dr Gomes said she has performed "hundreds" of ligations — tying women's tubes to prevent pregnancies, which is also against Catholic teaching.

Dr Anthony Albert, who works in a private hospital in Dhaka, said he was trained in menstrual regulation — "a kind of induced abortion" — after he graduated, and "I have done hundreds of MRs in my life, otherwise I might have lost my job."

Keynote speaker Bishop Theotonious Gomes of Dhaka, head of the bishops' commission, said a Catholic doctor shouldn't just look for money.

"Catholic social teaching puts human life on top of everything and we never support destroying life. Even if our faith collides with reality, we need to stick to our faith," he said.

Bishop Gomes added that the Church is currently thinking of establishing a "model Catholic hospital" in the Bangladesh, where people could receive treatment in accord with Catholic teachings.

Sister Mary Olympia, a nun from Associates of Mary Queen of Apostles congregation who is also a doctor, said she often feels the Church needs to relax its rules.

"Sometimes, without an abortion a mother can die or without artificial birth control the family of a partner with HIV can break down."

Source:

UCA News

Image: UCA News

The report, quoting a new census on religion, said the Catholic Church now has 3.86 million members in Ireland, but a growing population - including a surge in people of other faiths and none - means its share of the population is actually at its lowest point.

A new Census 2011 report on Religion, Ethnicity and Irish Travellers said that in percentage terms, the proportion of people who are Catholic has fallen to 84.2 percent from a peak of 94.9 percent 50 years ago.

The report also revealed significant growth in the non-Catholic population and a sharp rise in the number of Muslims, which has more than doubled in a decade to over 49,000, accounting for one percent of the population.

The Church of Ireland has seen a six percent increase since 2006 and now has 129,036 members, the report from the Central Statistics Office shows.

The number of Orthodox Christians has doubled since 2002 to 45,223, while the Apostolic and Pentecostal churches saw a major surge to over 14,000 adherents.

The number of non-religious people living in Ireland has increased by 400 percent over the past 20 years.

Among the Catholic community, 92 percent are Irish while the remaining 8 percent belong to a range of nationalities, the majority of whom are Polish.

Sources

• Independent.ie
• Irish Times
• BBC News
• The Daily Business Post
• Irish Examiner
• Image: Irish Times

Recent reports of local officials coercing women into late-term abortions have prompted an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are trying to push central government officials to change or repeal the law that penalises families for having more than one child.

Pressure is building on other fronts as well, as economists say that China's aging population and dwindling pool of young, cheap labour will slow the nation's economic growth rate.

"An aging working population is resulting in a labour shortage, a less innovative and less energetic economy, and a more difficult path to industrial upgrading," said He Yafu, a demographics analyst.

Beyond debate about the law itself, critics say that enforcement of the one-child policy leads to widespread abuses, because many local governments reward or penalise officials based on how well they keep down the population.

The New York Times says the talk on Chinese microblogs and articles in state-run newspapers on forced-abortion cases suggest that the one-child policy is being questioned more widely than in recent years.

Last month it was sharply criticised by scholars and policy advisers at a forum at Peking University co-organised by the National Bureau of Statistics to discuss the results of the 2010 census.

Scholars at the meeting were outraged by the plight of Feng Jianmei, who was forced to have a late-term abortion in early June. Her case became widely known after photographs of her dead seven-month-old unborn child were posted on the Internet.

"I think the right to have children is the right of a citizen," said Zhan Zhongle, a law professor at Peking University who has sent a petition signed by scholars and business executives to the National People's Congress urging its members to repeal the one-child law.

China's population of 1.3 billion is the world's largest.

Source:

New York Times

Image: Made in China