Thursday, January 18, 2007

Muslim population explosion


Another fascinating new tool from Google.

Plotting fertility rates against income per capita, reveals the following;

i) Hong Kong has the lowest fertility rate at a measly 0.94 children per woman
ii) Niger has the highest at a whopping 7.91 children.
iii) there is a linear relationship between fertility and wealth up until $20,000 per head. Then it is almost flat.
iv) the most fertile countries (adjusted for wealth) are the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries e.g. Saudi, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait etc
v) the least fertile countries are the old Soviet republics, which are literally dying out (whose populations are almost halving each generation).
vi) the majority of European countries have birth rates between 1.1 and 1.5 - they too are slowly dying out.
vii) those European countries with higher birth rates are those with high levels of immigration e.g. Norway, France

In short, African and Muslim countries are witnessing population explosions, whilst Christian countries are shrinking.

hat tip; Tim Worstall