December 26, 2002
BUT WE'VE GOT CRADLE TO GRAVE WELFARE!:
Persistent Drop in Fertility Reshapes Europe's Future (FRANK BRUNI, December 26, 2002, NY Times)In Spain and Sweden, Germany and Greece, the total fertility rate--or the average number of children that a woman, based on current
indicators, is expected to give birth to--was 1.4 or lower last year, according to the World Health Organization.In no West European country did the rate reach 2.1--the marker that, demographers say, means an exact replenishment of the population. By contrast, the United States had a 2.0 rate, which demographers attribute to greater immigration.
While that trend has been evident for many years, its slow-building consequences are now coming into starker relief, as more West European countries acknowledge and take new steps to address the specter of sharply winnowed and less competitive work forces, surfeits of retirees and pension systems that will need to be cut back deeply.
In Italy, where the fertility rate last year was 1.2, according to the health organization, Labor Minister Roberto Maroni has announced that the cost of the state pension system will need to be reduced. Mr. Maroni said the government would offer incentives, which he did not specify, to keep people at work past the minimum retirement age of 57.
The United Nations recently published data suggesting that the population of Spain could decline to about 31.3 million in 2050 from about 39.9 million now. According to the World Health Organization, Spain's fertility rate last year was 1.1, the lowest in Western Europe.
Many provinces in Italy's wealthy, well-educated north have rates well below that.
The rate in the province of Ferrara, which includes the city of Ferrara, has been under 0.9 for each of the years since 1986 that Italy's National Institute of Statistics kept track.
Ferrara officials talk about the dearth of young children in the streets, the closing of elementary schools over the last decade and a pervasive sense that something is missing.
"There's a lack of energy," Deputy Mayor Tiziano Tagliani said in a recent interview here. "The society is colder without children."
It's nice to see the Times notice that something's gone badly wrong with the West, but impossible to imagine that they'll seriously address any of the underlying causes--big government, divorce, too many people going to college, homosexuality, abortion, etc... Posted by Orrin Judd at December 26, 2002 10:53 PM
What effect does homosexuality have on population growth?
Sure, homosexuals don't produce children but then they're a very small segment of the population and I doubt this would have much effect on the numbers involved.
We also need the darwinists to explain why the fittest for survival are leaving the fewest offspring
Posted by: Jim at December 27, 2002 7:07 AMAli:
Besides the toll that AIDs and other STDs are taking, there are myriad secondary effects, like the way affluent gay couples are driving the labratory engineering of children, etc.
My physics adviser, who also happens to be the governor's adviser on workforce development, sent me this article this morning. As a newspaperman, I have to say that it is a shallow piece of work. Wouldn't be acceptable in my provincial paper.
One thing lacking was the historical dimension. France, once the most populous country in Europe, has been facing a fertility crisis for at least 150 years. Bounties for babies never worked there.
The situation became desperate in the generation before 1914, when France had to keep her conscripts in the army for 3 years v. only 2 for Germany, which in turn made her unable to compete economically.
The loss of confidence that Orrin keeps diagnosing in Europe may have something to do with it, or maybe not. Japan has the same problem, or worse, but it couldn't be because it has abandoned its Judeo-Christian moorings.
In America, at least, I think I see a tendency to big families among the most well-to-do. The tendency of arrivistes to the middle class to have fewer children is well-established. I cannot offer any quantified observations, but it does seem extraordinary to me how many of the people I know with a lot more money than me have four and five children.
You can't blame gays for heterosexuals not having children. Gays just don't have that much influence. You have to look at more economic factors. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Western women are dis-incented financially for having children.
I don't see a problem with zero population growth. At some point we will have to make adjustments to our economic and social models, which work best under growing population scenarios. Social Security will have to go. SS is just another version of the tradition of having kids to take care of you in old age, except it uses transfer payments instead of direct care by your children.
Jim
Survival of the fittest doesn't always favor high fertility. That is just one strategy. Having fewer children, and investing more in their success, is another strategy.