1. BEING ATTENTIVE TO DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS

Following the mandate which it has received, the Pontifical Council for the Family closely follows the demographic trends of the different countries in the world.[¹] For this reason, the Council has already convened various meetings of world-renowned experts. This has permitted a closer look at the circumstances proper to specific continents. In that way, trends in the Americas were the object of a congress in Mexico City[²] (21-23 April 1993). Trends in Asia and Oceania were studied at a conference in Taipei[³] (18-20 September 1995). The variety of demographic trends in the different countries of Europe were examined in Rome[⁴] (17-19 October 1996). At the present, the Pontifical Council for the Family is preparing a meeting which will be devoted to the demographic situation in African countries.

Meanwhile, the Pontifical Council for the Family follows with attention and interest the studies of research centres on demographic matters. Among these institutions is the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. This body convened a meeting of 14 world-renowned experts in Toronto, Canada, 4-6 November 1997, in order to study the actual worldwide decline in fertility and its foreseeable consequences for various nations in the immediate future. These experts could only confirm what all demographic data has already indicated for many years, namely, that the decrease in fertility which, for some 20 years, has affected most of the industrially developed countries--Northern and Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand--is extending to an ever greater number of developing countries, in Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. One expert, commenting on the continuity of this decline since 1975 in countries which already had a low fertility rate, remarked: "Once the fertility transition begins, further declines follow invariably".[⁵]