The Philippine population is not exploding

The Philippine population is not exploding
By Dr. Bernardo M. Villegas
Posted date: September 24, 2010

AM glad that Dr. Jose S. Sandejas, ... recently wrote a letter to the chairman of the NSCB expressing his surprise that in projecting population data from the 2000 census, some of the statisticians in the NSCB single-handedly added 146,582 babies to the actual number recorded in the 2000 census. The flimsy excuse given in a technical note, hidden in very small letters, is that they assumed that the Philippine population pyramid should continue to be “pyramid-like” (instead of an inverted pyramid). In fact, if they had not added the 146,582 babies to the data for the year 2000, the Philippine demographic data would no longer conform with the classic form of a pyramid. It would start to show the makings of an inverted pyramid which now characterizes aging countries like Japan, Spain, Italy and South Korea.

... I had always suspected some doctoring of population data by birth-control pushers. When the United Nations Population Commission was already reporting Philippine population growth rate of anywhere from 1.6 to 1.8 percent annually, the neo-Malthusians continued to report a growth rate of 2.3 percent. Only when some of us insisted that the growth rate had already decelerated did government demographers start to report a rate of less than 2.0 percent....

....The TFR for the year 2000 should have been reported as only 2.7 babies per woman, already dangerously close to zero population growth rate. The inflated figures that some gullible journalists unwittingly accept can mislead economic and social planners, including legislators who are pushing the Reproductive Health Bill and other population-control measures based on wrong and even deliberately doctored data.

...contrary to the view that the Philippine population is still exploding (seemingly supported by the common sight of overcrowded slum districts in the Metro Manila area), the Philippines’ National Statistical Coordination Board in its website, quotes the Philippine Population Growth Rate (PPGR) for the year 2010 to be at the slowing rate of only 1.82 percent per annum (vs. the 2.36 percent during the census year 2000, which figure is often still used to justify the view that PGR is “exploding”)...
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Oh my. Read the entire article here.