Jeudi le 5 janvier 2006 A society that has no children has no future. One of the clearest signs of our decline is the way we expend so much energy worrying about the wrong things....every society collapses because it chops down its trees...We're pretty much awash in resources, but we're running out of people--the one truly indispensable resource, without which none of the others matter....When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers....the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common? Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. 2:24:43 PM