In just the last four years, the United Nations has reduced its global population projection for 2050 by nearly one billion people. Other demographers expect that in the next few years the organization will be forced to lower its projections by yet another billion.

• The 2050 projection has gone from the 1994 estimate of 9.8 billion to this year's estimate of 8.9 billion.

• The current world population is about 6 billion people.

• Over the past 30 years, the average number of children born to women in the less-developed countries has fallen from 6.2 to 3.0 -- a decline of record-breaking speed.

• Although a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is needed just to replace current population, in Europe the fertility rate has dropped to 1.42 and in Japan to 1.43.

Spain has the world's lowest fertility rate -- at 1.15. Experts predict Europe will lose at least 100 million people by mid-century.

Due to immigration, the U.S. rate has gone from an average of 1.9 over the past quarter of a century to 2.0 now.

Experts say that never have fertility rates fallen so far, so low, so fast, for so long, all over the world. The numbers don't often make headlines, however, because they run counter to the arguments of some special interests -- "global warming" alarmists, for example.

Source: Ben Wattenberg (American Enterprise Institute), "Two Billion Never-Borns!" Washington Times, October 29, 1998.