Scandinavian sketches – signs of life among the Nordics
Despite environmentalist warnings of “overpopulation,” a Lancet study last year predicted that the world’s population will decline significantly in the coming decades for the first time in centuries. Yesterday Gript reported on the fact that Iran has enacted new legislation aimed at encouraging more births. Iran’s new “Law on Family and Youth Support” is part […]
Lessons for Ireland
The fourth season of the multiple award-winning series The Handmaid’s Tale recently commenced on SBS. Loosely based (by this season, at least) on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, the series presents a dystopian picture of a country known as Gilead, based in the north-east of America and ruled by a patriarchal and totalitarian theocratic government. The premise is that […]
The enormous cumulative drop in the Irish birth rate was revealed in figures from the Central Statistics Office today, which will add to concerns about a shrinking and ageing population leading to a fall off in economic growth and an inability to meet future pension and healthcare needs. The number of babies born in Ireland fell […]
The Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Péter Skjiilstra, visits Dublin today for discussions with his counterpart Simon Coveney, and with Tánaiste, Leo Varadker. The visit is part of the lead into to Hungary’s Presidency of the European Council, which begins at the end of the month. It comes at a time of epochal […]
Remember in the first weeks of the pandemic last year when Italy was the focus of the outbreak? News out of China was sketchy, so most of what we saw and heard of the new virus was from northern Italy: ambulances racing along narrow and dark streets, locked down towns, rows of coffins in churches […]
It is a good time to be a worker. Well, apart from the lockdowns. And it’s probably not great if you are in hospitality. Or tourism. Or in the airline industry. Ok, let’s start again. Leaving aside COVID (who doesn’t want to do that!?) the next few years and decades will be a good […]
There was no population growth at all in Germany in 2020, for the first time since 2011. It wasn’t because fewer babies were born, though the birth rate did drop slightly in 2020. Normally, Germany’s population growth results solely from positive net immigration. In fact, without immigration, the population would have actually been shrinking since 1972. Covid-19 restrictions […]
2020 was a year of record population lows. Newly released Census Bureau population estimates show record lows in United States population growth, both in 2020 and for the entire 2010-to-2020 decade. California’s population shrank for the first time as far back as records go, with the Census Bureau estimates indicating that California’s population decreased by about 69,000 residents in […]
All of us will be familiar with what a PPS number is. It is a bit like a barcode that you don’t have stamped on your forehead. Any person born in the state will have one, as will anyone who comes here because it is a requirement in having any dealings with the state. You […]
South Korea has a problem: according to critics its abortion legislation is out of date. So earlier this month, a bill to decriminalize it up to the fourteenth week of was tabled in the South Korean parliament. South Korea has banned abortion since 1953. Exceptions were introduced in 1973 for cases of rape or incest. […]