The recent annual speech to the nation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has caught my eye. In it he urges Russians to have more children. He declares: “In the next 15 years we will feel the demographic effects of the 1990s when the birth rate was low. This is a serious threat. It is a challenge to our whole nation. According to the experts, a good way to get over the demographic crisis is to radically increase the number of families with three or more children.”

You don’t need to ask experts the answer to this problem. It stares one in the face: more babies. Of the European countries, Russia, Italy, the Ukraine, Spain and Germany are the worst affected by the fall in the birth rate – but it is happening here too. Improved healthcare means an increase of the elderly population; the routine use of oral contraceptives since the 1960s and the routine acceptance of abortion when contraception fails account for the lack of population replacement at the base.