Word: birth
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...projected to drop by 18% while the number of those aged 65 or more will soar by 60%. Hospital maternity wards already stand empty in parts of Latvia and Slovakia, and schools are closing in eastern Germany for lack of pupils. Germany, in fact, is experiencing such a birth dearth that its population could crash from 82 million to 24 million by the end of the century. If the trend continues, former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok suggested in a report to the European Council earlier this month, within a generation spiraling pension and health costs will bust European state...
...problem has been looming for decades, and governments have responded with schemes to reform pension programs, raise retirement ages, increase labor participation rates and encourage the immigration of skilled workers. But politicians have been more bashful when it comes to urging people to have more babies. Low birth rates "will have a major impact on Europe's economic future," says Jonathan Grant, director of independent thinktank RAND Europe's Cambridge office and principal author of a study of European fertility released last year. "But there's a disconnect between the cycle of political elections and the generational cycle of demographics...
...they want." Ron Lesthaeghe, a demographer at the Free University of Brussels (V.U.B.), is happy that the taboo has been broken, but he says, "It's still too little, too late." Immigration has so far staved off population shrinkage in countries like Germany, where death rates already exceed birth rates, but even at numbers far beyond current levels it will have scant influence on the long-term balance among generations. After all, immigrants get old, too (and their birth rates decline within a generation of moving to Europe). Lest-haeghe warns that there's no quick fix. "We need...
...luminary Le Corbusier first visited Cambridge 45 years ago this fall, he came to begin work on a home for the practice and instruction of the visual arts at Harvard. With his characteristic black glasses sitting upon his beaked nose, Corbusier’s arrival marked not only the birth of a significant piece of the modernist architectural canon, but also a significant—and to this point, unparalleled—moment in Harvard’s historically tenuous relationship with contemporary art and architecture...
...Lauro in 1985 and killed a wheelchair-bound American named Leon Klinghoffer. He was killed presumably for being Jewish and his shipmates were forced at gunpoint to throw him from the ship. Currently, the leading terrorist insurgent in Iraq is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an international terrorist of Jordanian birth with ties to al Qaeda, who was in Iraq long before we arrived there. In April of 2003 U.S. Marines found terrorist training camp south of Baghdad which was run by the Iraqi government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Iraq was also home to Abu Nidal before his death...