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Wednesday, 19 May 2021, 12:59 pm
New Zealand s fertility
rate has reached an all-time low, with an average of
1.60 births per woman in the year ending March 2021, well
below the population replacement level of 2.1 required.
Statistics NZ also says that there does not appear to have
been an increase in births as a result of the COVID-19
lockdown during the first half of 2020.
“This should
be sounding alarm bells for politicians and policymakers in
New Zealand. With a declining fertility rate comes a
reliance on migration to provide for an aging population –
but all countries around the world will be competing for
that migration, because most countries are facing the same
Ron Lora: Gun regulation in America
Ron Lora - Guest Columnist
The Supreme Court will hear a major gun-rights case, possibly in the fall. At issue is the scope of the Second Amendment, more precisely whether Americans have a right to carry a loaded handgun in public. I will not prejudge how the Court will rule, although at the moment there is a sense that the right to carry guns outside the home will be broadened.
With only 4.3 percent of the world’s population, the United States has nearly 40 percent of the world’s non-military guns, well over one per person. According to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, only Brazil suffers a larger number of people killed by guns each year than the United States, the comparable 2017 figures being 48,493 and 40,229. Each day in the U.S., on average, over 100 people die from guns. The figures reflect nothing less than a public health crisis that we have come to live with.
One reason for the discrepancy is that people who die outside hospitals or on their way to a medical center are often not included in the official death count.