Your Demographic Deathwatch story of the day:

A NEW disease is abroad in eastern Germany: Frauenmangel, lack of women. In some towns there are only 75 young women for every 100 young men. In one or two there are as few as 40… The few women who stay prefer single parenthood to hitching themselves to useless partners—benefits for single mothers are generous. It is women who are now masters of their destinies. The study, which combines reportage with figures, tells of frustrated gangs of youths drinking outside supermarkets and sleeping on their loading ramps. What can be done? Eastern Germany is now a laboratory for the rest of Europe, says Mr Klingholz, since other places are starting to see the same phenomenon… And the most fertile ground for the extreme-right NPD is now in places with a shortage of women, not high unemployment.

Few countries have ever been less in need of lebensraum. The New Republic’s hit piece on the NR cruise may think the thesis of my book is racist drivel, but the UN population division agrees with its statistical foundation: Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe are in steep population decline; Western Germany and Western Europe are in rapid population transformation. And as the UN says, what’s underway is without parallel in human history.