International Day of Older Persons.

On December 14, 1990, the United Nations General Assembly designated October 1 the International Day of Older Persons.

Every human born may well be an extra mouth to feed but also another pair of helping hands and an additional thoughtful brain.

We need no more misanthropic pronouncements about too many people or that humanity has exceeded carrying capacity or that humanity is an alien species to the Planet Earth’s ecology.

The fertility rate is dropping, the rate of population rise is falling and family sizes are reducing. Those who rail against the numbers of people in the world and declare over-population a threat are pushing against an open door.

Even though it might sound counterintuitive, for stabilising and lowering the population forget all about population policies and instead simply help each and every woman bear a child in good health, whenever she herself chooses to have a baby.

Ending population growth starts by saving the children of the poorest women. Giving women control of both their lives and their bodies is what will control population growth. The best family planning and contraceptive is the empowerment of women.

Birth rates became Finland's national news in 2017 when the birth rate that year declined to an all-time low at 1.49 children per woman's lifetime. The previous lows close to this level in Finland were seen during the famine years in the mid-1860s. Finland's low birth rate is in a country where women have been given good opportunities both to work and raise a family at the same time.

“This means the future will be difficult unless we can find a way to fix the situation,” Prime Minister Antti Rinne said. “I think it has been clear for a long time that we won’t survive the expected development without employment-based immigration. We have to be able to raise the employment rate until the 2040s, and we also need employment-based immigration to do so. It means that we’ll have to look for measures that facilitate the entry of skilled labour to Finland,” said Rinne.

Meanwhile, population experts have warned falling birth rates in Ho Chi Minh City - Vietnam’s most populous city - could spell disaster for economic growth and welfare systems. Ho Chi Minh City's total fertility rate (TFR) in 2018 was 1.33 children, significantly lower than Vietnam's replacement-level fertility of 2.10 children. Ho Chi Minh City’s TFR has been steadily declining for the past 15 years. For comparison, the TFR in 2004 was 1.59. 

Life and work pressures, late marriage, late childbirth and an overall aversion to giving birth have all contributed to the city’s falling birth rate, said Pham Chanh Trung, deputy director of the municipal Population and Family Planning Department. “Higher education levels, improved living conditions, the growth in popularity of ‘trendy’ lifestyles, and the enjoyment of childless life are other contributing factors.” Ho Chi Minh City should seriously worry about its falling birth rate, Trung said. Situations in other countries have shown that once a country’s birth rate has dropped too low, government measures have little impact on bringing the number up again, even with costly campaigns, he added. A low and falling birth rate leads to a quickly aging population, which places pressure on the city’s welfare system including pensions, health insurance, and social security, Trung said. Having a lower working age population, especially young professionals, will gravely affect Ho Chi Minh City’s socio-economic growth, the population expert warns.


Birth rates keep falling in China. In Chongqing, one of China’s municipalities with a population of 31million, the rate of new births fell by a sharp 30 percent. Earlier this year, it was revealed that births in China had dropped to the lowest level in nearly 60 years in 2018. More than 15 million babies were born on the Chinese mainland in 2018, a drop by about 2 million from that of 2017. China has fully revoked the one-child policy in 2016 to tackle the problems of a rapidly shrinking workforce and to prepare to look after an ageing population. The problem continues to worsen. The number of women aged 15 to 49 peaked in 2011 and has been declining since then, and the fertility rate is just below 1.7.

In Taiwan the same trend is seen. Births in Taiwan have shown a gradual downward trend over the past 10 years. The fertility rate — the number of children born per woman — was only 1.06 last year, one of the lowest in the world. The government has declared the rapidly aging population and ever-declining number of births a “national crisis,” while pledging greater support for those raising children, including creating work environments that are more friendly to pregnant women and providing preschool education and subsidy programs. The government has also promised to make the nation friendlier to immigrants.

More than one-in-six Canadians are now at least 65, and more than half of us were born in the “baby boom” period spanning 1946 to 1965.Estimates are that Canada’s seniors could account for 22.7 percent of the population by 2031. By 2039, it’s estimated there could be four million more seniors than at present. 

Need we go on? It is not too many people which is the problem but too few people of working age.