Editorial»
Demographics of Christmas
DEC 25 - No story in the Western canon is more familiar than Luke’s account of the first Christmas, which begins, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world,” and ends with what millions regard as the most promising words ever written: “She gave birth to her firstborn, a son.” As we remember the impact that one birth had, we should not forget the promise—and perils—facing the children who will be born this Christmas Day.
Global census takers concluding work on that first Christmas morning would have counted about 250 million people. Jesus was one of 41,000 children born that day. At least half of those babies died within their first year. Those who survived could expect to live to age 35 or so. The most common causes of death were infections and accidents, the impact of which was often made worse by malnutrition and anemia.
World population has now reached 6.3 billion. The Population Reference Bureau estimates that 372,037 children will be born this Christmas Day. Ninety percent of those children will be born in less-developed countries; a third will be born in India and China alone. The typical newborn will live to age 67. But this average masks extraordinary national and regional diversity in life expectancy.
Despite enormous progress, the ills that stalked the world when Jesus was born have not been eradicated, and new threats have appeared. Although some developing countries have become more prosperous and better able to protect their children, children born in most poor countries, especially those born into poor families, will die at astronomical rates compared with children born in the United States and other developed countries.
Consider the case in any of the poor countries in the news recently. Newborns in Afghanistan are 20 times more likely to die within a year than are infants in the United States. The infant mortality rate in Afghanistan is 154 per 1,000 births; in the United States it is 7 per 1,000 births. Infant mortality in Pakistan is 10 times higher than it is in the United States. In Iraq, infant mortality is 15 times higher than in this country.
For many children born this Christmas in poor countries, conditions are sadly close to what they were 2,000 years ago. Only 10 percent of the children born in Ethiopia will be delivered by a skilled birth attendant. Only about half the children in sub-Saharan Africa will be properly immunized and just a few more will attend school. Forty percent or more of the children in Bangladesh, India and Nepal will be malnourished. More than 2 million African children will live with HIV-AIDS.
All of us will have to live with the consequences of how the children born this Christmas are raised. But few of us pay attention to children outside our own families. We have no idea how many are born each year or what their prospects are. (Over the next 12 months, 136 million babies will be born, 123 million of them in developing countries.) Our ignorance is remarkable, given that Caesar Augustus was collecting data on the topic more than 2,000 years ago.
A single birth is most often a joy. Demographic data on births and deaths are considered boring. But the statistics count. The fundamentals of population size, growth, composition and distribution are as important characteristics of our world as are the details of the human genome. And like the human genome, this knowledge is only as useful as we make it. Christmas is a good time to think about these numbers and to consider what we wish for the 372,037 children to be born that day. Posted on: 2003-12-25 02:48
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