Stork on the endangered list!

	A mother with her child Photo: Robert Laplante

If storks ever really did deliver our newborns, they certainly haven't been very busy of late. The Canadian baby boom, which spanned the years between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1960s, produced birth rates as high as 28.9 births per 1,000 people.

In 2001, Canada's birth rate was 10.5 per 1,000 people, similar to the levels of Switzerland, Finland and Belgium, but lower than that of the United States, which stood at 14.5.

The total fertility rate—defined as the number of children born to 1,000 women over the course of their childbearing years—is a useful way of examining the baby situation. During the baby boom in Canada, the total fertility rate peaked in 1959 at 3,935 births per 1,000 women. By 2001, this rate had fallen to a record low of 1,511 births per 1,000. Not only are contemporary Canadian women having fewer children, they are also having their first children at later ages. One-third of first births in 2001 were to mothers aged 30 and older. A decade earlier, only one-fifth of births were to this age group.

The year 1990 saw the number of births in Canada reach above 400,000 for the first time since 1965. Since then though, the number of births decreased each year until 2001 when there were 333,744 births; a 1.8% increase over the low of 327,882 births in 2000. These numbers pale in comparison with the 479,275 children born in 1959.

While birth rates in Canada have been falling, death rates have remained relatively stable in recent years. At 7.1 per 1,000 people in 2001, Canada's death rate was somewhat lower than the 8.5 experienced in the United States. The number of deaths has been above 200,000 since 1993 and continues to grow. There were 219,538 deaths in 2001. Part of this increase was due to the general growth in the population and in the number of elderly persons.

The life expectancy of a Canadian boy born in 1951 was 66 years, while that of a girl born in that same year was 71 years. Boys and girls born in 2001, however, can expect to live 11 years longer. Most of those who make it into their eighties and nineties are female. In 2002, women represented 62% of those aged 80 to 84, and 74% of those aged 90 and over. Canada's general increase in life expectancy, together with falling birth rates, has considerably increased the proportion of elderly people in our society.