It’s been suggested, from time to time, that many countries have been lying for years about their birth rates, when actually it’s been years since they fell below replacement, and even in some unmentioned cases have already crossed the border into falling populations.
Baby Vinice Mabansag was honored on Nov. 15 after her birth at a public hospital in Manila. She was among infants chosen worldwide to symbolically mark the arrival of the globe’s 8 billionth person, with the United Nations...a formerly good idea gone bad...
projecting that the human race would reach the population milestone that day.
"Generally, fertility has been declining in all age groups since 2008. Specifically, fertility rates for women aged 20 to 24 years steadily declined from 163 births per 1,000 women in 2008 to 84 births per 1,000 women in 2022. This was also observed in women aged 25 to 44 years," the authority said in a statement on Nov. 13.
By comparison, the birth rate was about six children per woman in the Southeast Asian nation in the 1970s. The politically influential Catholic Church frowns on artificial family planning methods and has often clashed with state-funded population-control programs.
Still, a recent U.N. projection suggests that the global population could grow to about 8.5 billion in 2030 and to 9.7 billion in 2050, with more than half of the projected increase concentrated in just eight countries, including the Philippines.
The report, which did not detail how this would occur, listed the other countries as the Democratic Republic of the Congo
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material...
, Egypt, Æthiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistain and Tanzania.
Women living in rural areas had a slightly higher fertility rate of 2.2 children per woman, compared to those living in urban areas with 1.7 children per woman, the PSA said. The agency said the country’s 1.9 birthrate had fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, or the rate at which births sustain population levels.
"Despite expected increase in the fertility of Filipino women because of impeded access to family planning services during lockdowns and quarantine protocols. ... The Philippines was able to register recent population statistics unheard of in years, with fertility numbers plummeting to less than two offspring per woman," the Philippine Commission on Population and Development (PopCom) said in a statement to journalists.
The Philippines’ latest fertility rate is comparable to the 1.8 rate in upper-middle income countries, according to Lolito Tacardon, PopCom’s executive director.
"This can be considered as a ’breakthrough’ for the country’s programs on population and development as well as family planning, which were instituted more than five decades ago," Tacardon said.
The announcement came as recent data showed that the Philippines’ fertility rate has been continuously declining — with the steepest drop recorded during the past five years.
The fertility rate in the Philippines, one of only two predominantly Catholic nations in Asia, has been falling since Congress enacted legislation in 2012 to provide universal and free access for all citizens to nearly all modern contraceptives at government health centers.
The Philippines historically has had higher birth rates than many of its neighbors in Southeast Asia, but it now boasts the region’s third lowest fertility rate after Singapore and Thailand.
According to preliminary results from a national demographic and health survey by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the country’s fertility rate declined from 2.7 children per woman of reproductive age in 2017 to 1.9 babies per woman in 2022.