Religious baby boom primed to send shock waves through secular world

The Australian: Religious baby boom primed to send shock waves through secular world

Canadian author Eric Kaufmann sees demography as a time bomb for democracy

WE know about the ageing of developed countries and the number of people on the move, but the figures can still startle.

In 1900, the West, including Russia and eastern Europe, accounted for 35 per cent of the world's population; today it accounts for 17 per cent, and that number is expected to fall to about 10 per cent by 2050.

In 1959, Europe had 2.5 times the population of Africa. By 2050, according to UN estimates, Africa will have more than four times Europe's population and almost 40 per cent of Europeans will be over 60.

Between 2000 and 2005, 17 million people moved from developing to developed countries.

According to Eric Kaufmann, reader in politics at Birkbeck College, London, and author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, the kicker is that these changes don't just indicate rational adjustment to economic opportunity, humans as work units being shuffled around by the invisible hand of capitalism. They presage a deep cultural shift: a coming eclipse of the secular, the scientific and the religiously moderate by the militantly devout. …