At the brink of my ego bursting, a coworker sent me this link:
I read an absolutely fascinating cover story from Sunday's print edition of The New York Times Magazine called, "No babies?"
You don't have to read the entire article (It's a long one) to get the gist: Europe's birthrate is in drastic decline and the implications this trend are severe.
Author Russell Shorto throws some numbers out early in the article to illustrate how low the birthrate is:
- Birthrates in Southern and Eastern Europe have dropped below 1.3. At this rate, a country's population will cut in half in 45 years.
- In 1960, Europe represented 12.5 percent of the world's population. Today it is 7.2 percent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 percent of the world will be European.
- In Germany, birth-to-death ratios result in an annual population loss of 100,000.
Sounds like I need to get over to Italy and start making babies ASAP. I'll jump on getting my dual citizenship to make it legit.
R.I.P Seattle SuperSonics
I don't usually run ads, but...
On my way in to work this morning I saw a license plate cover that read: "Husky grad, Cougar dad."
That's like telling the world, "My offspring is weaker."