[填空题]

[A] Demographic decline worries people because it is believed to go hand in hand with economic decline. At the extremes it may well be the result of economic factors: pessimism may depress the birth rate and push up rates of suicide and alcoholism. But, in the main, demographic decline is the consequence of the low fertility that generally goes with growing prosperity. In Japan, for instance, birth rates fell below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman in the mid-1970s and have been particularly low in the past 15 years
[B] During the second half of the 20th century, the global population explosion was the big demographic annoyance. Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank in the 1970s, compared the threat of unmanageable population pressures with the danger of nuclear war. Now that worry has evaporated, and this century is frightening itself with the opposite fear: the onset of demographic decline.
[C] Governments hate the idea of a shrinking populat