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July 1, 2008
The New Population Bomb
The problem may not be too many people, but too few.
In the four decades since Paul Ehrlich published his demographic jeremiad, The Population Bomb, demographers have largely worried that the earth is getting too crowded. Contemporary proponents point to supposed signs of climate change, food shortages, and commodities inflation as evidence that Ehrlich was right. However, now comes word that in some parts of the world the key problem is not too many people, but too few. Russell Shorto's absorbing June 29 article in The New York Times Magazine informs us:
In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the "replacement rate" - the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country's current population level. At various times in modern history - during war or famine - birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to "low" or "very low" levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, Jos? Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari - the authors of the 2002 report - saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country's population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: "lowest-low fertility."
The hypothesis Shorto presents is that nations that have only half-heartedly embraced modern society's welcoming of women into the paid workforce by failing to provide state financial incentives or career flexibility inadvertently end up providing strong disincentives for couples to have children. Shorto notes that as modern culture continues marching around the world, population shrinkage is far from solely a European problem. He reports that countries as diverse as Iran, South Korea, and Thailand are also facing alarming drop-offs in fecundity.
One thing left largely unexplored in this lengthy piece, however, are those traditionalists - of whatever faith - who reject the modern project to push both parents into the paid workforce and who opt instead to raise their children without recourse to state surrogates. While a second income is an economic necessity for many parents today (even given the existence of financial incentives to work), the article fails to consider that many - if finances were not an issue - would prefer to be home with their children during their formative years. How better to pass on religiously based knowledge, traditions, and character traits to the next generation and avoid the corrosive, occasionally life-denying, tenets of modernity?
Hat tip: Yehiel Poupko.
Comments
What did you think of the trend noted in the article towards working mothers there having more children than stay-at-home mothers?
high fertility was associated with high female labor-force participation . . . and the lowest fertility levels in Europe since the mid-1990s are often found in countries with the lowest female labor-force participation.
Posted By: Dave | July 2, 2008 11:17 AM
The author puts the blame on nations that haven't provided government support for working mothers, whatever form that may be. The article should be broadened to note the changed face of society in the US, where whites will soon be in the minority. Their birth rate has dropped, but not for many or most of the minority groups. In Israel the Arab birth rate far exceeds that of the Jewish Israelis, and some people worry that the Jews may become a minority in a Jewish nation. In Europe, the white population is shrinking, but not the Arab, Muslim peoples who have moved in. Same countries but different views of raising children.
Posted By: Larry Craig | July 2, 2008 12:11 PM
Like many other things..."flavor of the month" effect. Social engineering is right up there with categorizing food choices, etc. etc. One month eggs are bad, next they're good. One month butter is out and margarine is in, then it's back to butter. One day you must drink at least 8 glasses of water, next we discover that's too much! For years we have been predicting overpopulation, perhaps to achieve a certain goal, without doing the homework and now reality is beginning to set in. How about some plain common sense brought to bear to many of these issues?
Posted By: Stan | July 2, 2008 2:02 PM
It is all about what you value. Another child or an extra vacation?
I had five children and so far have six grandchildren. We really like ourselves.
If you believe your children are eternal and shiny cars end up in the trash heep the choice is obvious.
Raising children is the most important thing you'll ever do.
I have a doctorate by the way.
Posted By: Helen McCaffrey | July 2, 2008 8:59 PM
Would suggest that there may be a greater correlation between the birth-rates and secure social security of the aged than for working mothers. Large families also provide a superannuation system where there is non in place by the state.
It is not that long ago when large families in Australia were the norm. There was also a higher death rate in small children, and a lower life expectancy for those over 60 than today. This has probably skewed the population so that there is now a lower proportion in the active reproductive age group than before.
Posted By: JohnH | July 3, 2008 8:57 AM
"Whiteness" is a social construct that's always been flexible. Some non-Protestant people of European descent use to not be really considered "white," now they are. Nobody has ancestors from Whiteland, who came to America to be White-Americans. Whiteness was anointed upon some, but not others, upon arrival.
And take the case of Hispanics in the Southwest. When citizenship was conferred upon them in the late 1840s by treaty with Mexico, they became officially "white" because at that time, only "white" people could be citizens...but not always treated as "white," however.
Posted By: Gregory Peterson | July 3, 2008 1:36 PM
Women working outside of the home are now a fact of life, and they are just as good at passing on morals and traditions as stay-at-home parents. I believe the high cost of living in general in Europe is to blame for the low birth rate. It's a knee-jerk reaction, although a common one unfortunately, to automatically blame women for society's problems. Europe, though, does need to seriously look at the problem of the low birth rates or more and more of its workers are going to come from Muslim countries.
Posted By: Karen | July 8, 2008 9:31 AM
My wife and I visited Germany in 1986. At the time, I understood the birthrate to be 1.2 and, though the population total maintained about 65 million, it did so because of immigration from Turkey. The fear then was that, at the present rate, Germany would eventually not be populated by Germans at all. The sad truth is that too many Christians have fallen for the "overpopulation" lie over the decades and have opted for small families to "spare the planet." What better gift could a Christian couple give than godly offspring who demonstrate Christlikeness to a perishing world!
Posted By: Jim Swanson | July 16, 2008 3:40 PM