Gerry Charlotte Phelps

"A Day Without A Mexican"

(Image from daykeeperjournal.com)

Chuck Colson writes (Breakpoint, 6-11-08):

A few years ago, a film called A Day Without a Mexican took an amusing look at our dependence on Mexican labor...both sides of the immigration debate share one assumption:  There is virtually an endless supply of people from Mexico - and the rest of Latin America - who are ready to come here and work.

This assumption may be wrong.  Mexico is having an unprecedented decline in birthrates.  It has dropped from 7 children per woman in 1965 to 2.1 today - the same as in the U.S.  It is expected that in a few more decades, Mexico's population will be older than ours.

Already, around half of the world's population lives in countries with below-replacement birth rates.  Not only Japan, but also  Korea, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka.  China's government-enforced low birthrate and its rapidly-aging population threaten to undo its newly-achieved prosperity.

Iran, with only 1.7 births per woman, has one of the world's most rapidly aging populations.  "Spengler" thinks that Iran's aggressive behavior may be related to the need to act while "it still has the manpower to do so."

Soon the West may face the prospect of fewer immigrants, resulting in a lower standard of living.

The population decline worldwide does not come from illness or lack of fertility, but by choice. 

Any society that devalues marriage, that encourages people to place career above family, that embraces abortion will see birthrates plummet.

As Spengler and others have pointed out, the root of the problem is the decline of religious faith.

Loss of faith in the world to come leaves us grasping for everything we can get in this one, even at the expense of future generations.

Not surprisingly, the exception to these demographic changes is among religious believers, who take seriously the command to be fruitful and multiply - who believe in the family and see children as a gift from God.  Their belief in the world come come makes them fruitful in this one.

It also makes it all the more urgent to share our faith with others.

Demographic Winter in Europe

                                  Riga, Latvia

                      (Image from rigalatvia.net)

"Where Have All The Children Gone?"  Chuck Colson, 6-9-08, Breakpoint, here .

For nearly 1,000 years, the people of Latvia have maintained a distinct identity, despite being dominated by their neighbors. Nearly one-third of Latvia’s population was killed by the Nazis and the Soviets between 1940 and 1954. Yet Latvia survived.

But, today, Latvia’s existence is threatened; only now, the threat is home-grown.

Latvia’s population has shrunk from 2.7 million in 1989 to about 2.2 million today. Part of that, of course, is emigration. But most of the problem is the result of low birthrates: Between 1989 and 2003, the number of Latvians under the age of 18 declined by 29 percent.

The International Monetary Fund calls the “fall in the population . . . quite worrisome.” It threatens Latvia’s economic well-being, which, in turn, encourages more emigration.

But the threat is far more than economic. According to Inese Slesere, a member of the Latvian Parliament, low birthrates threaten “the very survival of the Latvian nation.”

The precipitous drop in birthrates, Slesere says, stems from a “radically individualistic philosophy” that diminishes “virtue, character, and respect for others” within society.

The result is what she calls a “culture of rejection and death,” where “divorce, abortions, cohabitation, single-parent households, and out-of-wedlock births” are commonplace.

This culture, hardly unique to Latvia, has resulted in what is called a “demographic winter.”....The phenomenon is not limited to the industrialized West: At least 40 nations have below-replacement level birthrates.

According to Philip Longman, the author of The Empty Cradle, this decline is “the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations and the future of society in the 21st century.”

This probably does come as a surprise to you. Because, for nearly 40 years, we have been told that there are too many people, and that many of the world’s problems are the result of overpopulation. “People are the enemy,” we are told by radical environmentalists.

But, while technology has provided solutions to the economic and environmental challenges of a growing population, there are no such fixes for declining ones. Technology cannot produce more Latvians if Latvians do not want to have more children.

Financial incentives do not work, either. The Russian government pays families a bonus equal to roughly twice the average annual wage for every child after the firstborn. Russia’s population is expected to be cut in half by the end of this century.

The problem—you see—is cultural, and the solution must be cultural. Government policies can encourage virtuous behavior, but the antidote to the “radical individualism” that created demographic winter lies elsewhere. The only real answer is Christianity and the worldview it produces.

Video: trailer for the documentary Demographic Winter.

Edward Hugh, “Latvian Fertility,” Latvia Economy Watch, 9 August 2007.

“Mean Age of Women at Birth of First Child, around 2003,” Latvia Economy Watch.

Edward Hugh, “Migration and the Latvian Labour Market,” Latvia Economy Watch, 28 August 2007.

Don Feder, “Demographic Winter,” Mercator Net, 5 March 2008.

speech: Don Feder, “How to Take the Chill Out of Demographic Winter,” 15 November 2007.

Inese Slesere, “Putting FAMILY FIRST, in Latvia, in the World,” Howard Center, May 2005.

John Jalsevac, “New Documentary Explores Global Demographic Crisis,” LifeSiteNews.com, 8 February 2008.

Steve Jordahl, “Demographic Winter Documentary Concludes a Population Shortage,” Family News, 13 February 2008.

Philip Longman, The Empty Cradle (Basic Books, 2004).

Roberto Rivera, “A Dying Population,” The Point, 9 October 2006.

Gina Dalfonzo, “Re: A Dying Population,” The Point, 11 October 2006.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 061025, “A Sterile Worldview: Vanishing Russia.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 070810, “For the Sake of the Planet?: Anti-Natalism in America.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 060418, “Be Fruitful and Multiply: Christians and the Birth Dearth.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 050711, “Wolves in Berlin: Europe’s Demographic Crisis.”

Anne Morse, “Want to Save the Environment? Have a Baby!” BreakPoint WorldView, September 2005.

Demographic Winter Coming - More Babies Needed!

                                (Image from trendwatching.com)

Worried about too many people breathing and eating burgers, messing up the environment?  That puts the focus in the wrong place, as Robert Knight outlines here.  Instead of worrying about too many people, we need to be worrying about two few people.  "Demographic Winter" is coming, and is much scarier than alarmist environmental worries.  The really frightening future is a human race that is rapidly depopulating. 

A new documentary, Demographic Winter, provides the grim facts behind the worldwide trend away from having children.

• 70 countries, including virtually all of Europe, are now below replacement birth-rate levels.
• Russia’s current population of 140 million will decline to 70 million by 2045 if current trends continue. The economic and political consequences would be staggering.
• The money boom triggered by the Baby Boom is about to run its course in the United States, as the Boomers make less, spend less and retire, drawing on the taxed earnings of a shrinking population of economic producers.
• In Germany, in 2006, in one province alone, 220 schools were padlocked for lack of pupils.
• Japan’s population reduction is so severe that the country is virtually shutting itself down, with labor shortages and plants closing.

Now, if you buy into the global warming theory, this may seem all to the good, since each human is a detriment. As the Manhattan Institute’s Kay Hymowitz notes in Demographic Winter

A lot of people I’ve talked to about this say, “Isn’t it great if the birthrate is going down, because, after all, that’s fewer carbon footprints and less stress on Mother Earth.” They’re not thinking about how much their own care is going to cost when they get older.

And it will be costly. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are speeding toward a crash against a fiscal roadblock:  the number of workers to pay for it is shrinking. Not only are we creating fewer kids, but more of the ones we do create are being born out of wedlock, which increases the likelihood that they will themselves be less self-sufficient.

Here are some of the scientists, economists, sociologists, psychologists and other experts featured in Demographic Winter:

Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker, Rutgers marriage expert David Popenoe, Harvard’s Nicholas Eberstadt, New America Foundation’s Phil Longman, Family Research Council’s Patrick Fagan, Norval Glenn of the University of Texas, and many others, provide data that show the decline of the two-parent family is at the heart of human decline—globally. And it won’t necessarily help the environment.

Oddly, having fewer kids also puts strains on the environment:

Dr. Jianguo Liu, director of sustainability at Michigan State University, notes that “global households are increasing more than the number of people” and thus using more resources. Because of divorce and the rise in single-person households, in 2005 alone in the United States, people used an extra 600 billion gallons of water and 73 billion kilowatts of electricity.

So the nuclear family is actually the most environmentally-friendly way to house people!

Yet the family is under assault by a constant media drumbeat about alternative lifestyles, the illusory “benefits” of the sexual revolution, and the costs of having children.

Environmental groups are saying:

Stop reproducing! Heck, stop marrying! (Unless you’re gay!) Fewer marriages mean fewer children using fewer resources. We get not only a greener earth, but the end of any pesky sexual “norm.”

Meanwhile, young men are increasingly pulling back from marriage and children.

In 1970, 69 percent of 25-year-old and 85 percent of 30-year-old white men were married; in 2000, only 33 percent and 58 percent were, respectively. And the percentage of young guys tying the knot is declining as you read this. Census Bureau data show that the median age of marriage among men rose from 26.8 in 2000 to 27.5 in 2006—a dramatic demographic shift for such a short time period.  (From http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_single_young_men.html)

As an economist, I am aware that people are assets to an economy when they are workers.  Working people add to the prosperity of workers and non-workers alike, because of the high productivity rates per worker in developed economies.  But there is such a thing as a "working age" - roughly 18-65.  When that population falls in relation to those 65 and older, it becomes a "graying" population.  That is when we are in big trouble! 

The only way to have more workers is to have more children.  We also know from many studies that children who do not live with both a mother and a father, married and living in the same house, have more problems and lead less-productive lives as an adult. 

So that means the way out of the coming "Demographic Winter" is more marriages, earlier in life, with more children in them, and marriages that last.  That, and not dubious environmental alarms, is where our greatest focus should be.