The number of births in Japan fell in 2019 to a level unseen since 1874, around 900,000. But there were 1.4 million deaths for a net loss of 512,000 Japanese. An even larger loss in Japan’s population is expected this year.
Japan’s population has been shrinking since 2007, when deaths first exceeded births by 18,000. And with 28 percent of its population over 65, and fewer births every passing year.
Across Japan, writes The New York Times: “Whole villages are vanishing as young people choose not to have children or move to urban areas … The Government estimates that the population could shrink by about 16 million people — or nearly 13 percent — over the next 25 years.”
South Korea has an even lower birth rate, and its population is expected to start diminishing this year.
But it is Eastern Europe where the population crisis is most advanced. At the end of the Cold War, Bulgaria had 9 million people. By 2017, that had fallen to 7.1 million. In 2050, Bulgaria’s population is estimated at 5.4 million — a loss of 40 percent to death and migration since Bulgaria won its freedom from the Soviet Empire.
By 2050, Ukraine and Poland are each projected to lose another 6 million people, and Hungary will lose 1.5 million.
U.N. demographers project Russia’s population may fall from 145 million today to 121 million by 2050. Such losses rival those that Russia suffered under Lenin, Stalin and World War II.
Since this writer published The Death of the West, nothing has happened to alter my conclusion as to where the West was destined.
“The Death of the West is not a prediction of what is going to happen. It is a depiction of what is happening now.”
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