Ruth Institute Blog

by Jennifer Roback Morse

This article was first published at familyinamerica.org on January 10, 2012.

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
Mara Hvistendahl
Public Affairs, 2011; 314 pages, $26.99

This brave and timely book has many strengths and one glaring, but understandable, weakness. The strength of this book is the reporting. Mara Hvistendahl, a liberal, pro-choice feminist, painstakingly documents the catastrophic consequences of the worldwide “choice” for male babies: gender imbalance leading to prostitution, sex slavery, and male frustration and aggression. The weakness of this book is the political analysis. She doesn’t understand how deeply Roe v. Wade changed American political culture, particularly within the conservative movement broadly conceived. But both these strengths and weaknesses work together to yield an honest and courageous book that should be read by anyone who considers himself (or herself) well informed. Read more…

by Marcus Roberts

Nothing much from me today – instead, for all of you who are more visual learners, here’s a video! This is on the beneficial effect that population has on poverty and was produced by the Population Research Institute. (You can also see another one of their videos in this earlier DID post.) Enjoy!

Watch video.

Learning from the demographics. (From nationalreview.com.)

Last week, when reviewing some of the family talk on the campaign trail, I mentioned a new study co-authored by Brad Wilcox called The Sustainable Demographic Dividend. As many National Review Online readers know, W. Bradford Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. He is also the president of Demographic Intelligence, the premier provider of U.S. fertility forecasts and fertility analytics for companies in the financial-services, food, household-products, insurance, juvenile-products, medical, and retail sectors. He talks to National Review Online about what exactly fertility and marriage have to do with the economy. –KJL Read more…

by Denyse O’Leary

It is mainly religious people who raise children, and more women in America are religious.

First, the context: Modern political science — which readily understands imperialism, resistance, and clash of competing interests — does not similarly understand “the wasting away of nations.” That, says David Goldman, author of How Civilizations Die: (and why Islam is dying too), is because political scientists tend to assume that people will follow their rational self-interest. In fact, they often don’t. Read more…

by Michael Cook

Demographic denialists are ignoring the perils of an ageing population.

Like many others, the US-based Center for Biological Diversity was aghast at the arrival of the 7 billionth person today. “Overpopulation and overconsumption are the root causes of environmental destruction. They’re driving species extinct, destroying wildlife habitat, and undermining the basic needs of all life at an unprecedented rate. It has to stop.” Read more…

by Marcus Roberts

A couple of related pieces today that both underline a theme that has been commonplace at Demography is Destiny over the past few months.  If you have to ask what that theme is then you obviously have not been reading with the necessary assiduity and I am not going to help you. Read more…

An urban high school teacher in Connecticut talks about unwed motherhood, fatherlessness, and how it affects the kids in his classroom.

by Gerry Garibaldi

…Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch… Read more…

by Marcus Roberts

Bosnia and Herzegovina has another 650 years or so.  Macau has about the same.  Germany has just over 1500 years and Brazil another 3000 years.  Until what? Until their populations disappear entirely! Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

Asian marriage is in the news, with The Economist reporting on “the flight from marriage” in that part of the world and the London Telegraph noting the materialism which is delaying marriages in China. Read more…

by Robert W. Patterson

This article was originally published at WashingtonExaminer.com.

With his daring deficit reduction plan, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin deserves credit for courageous fiscal leadership. But he is painting Republicans into a corner if he thinks exploding federal outlays can be reduced without addressing underlying family demographics. Read more…

On my radio program on Monday, I will be interviewing Don Feder, talking about Demographic Winter and the World Congress of Families Summit in Moscow. Tune in on-line at www.catholicradioofsandiego.com to listen.  Or listen live in the San Diego area on AM 1000 KCEO.

All you Lefties: tune in and find out if concern about Demographic Winter is really racist. Maybe you’ll catch us saying something mean, and you’ll be a hero to all your Lefty friends!

by Marcus Roberts

The world’s economies, especially in the West seem to be in somewhat of a bind. The markets around the world are currently in a slide; Europe is worried about Spain and Italy; the USA has had its credit rating downgraded by S&P for the first time in its history.  It is therefore an appropriate time for the New York Times to publish an article by Chrystia Freeland, the global editor at large of Reuters, that argues that the world’s economic woes can be linked back to the fact that the West is getting old.  Read more…

BY JONATHAN V. LAST

Low fertility threatens the world’s economic future, but a new report ignores the danger.

In 2004, the United Nations published demographic projections suggesting that the world in general, and the West in particular, was in real trouble: Persistently low fertility meant that the population of most industrialized nations would shrink in the coming decades. The U.N. report seemed to crystallize decades of increasingly gloomy predictions. Read more…

by Colin Mason

I remember standing in my room in the Cosmos Hotel, sleep-deprived from airports and loaded down with equipment. The room may have once been handsome, but now its current condition is stale and threadbare — its blue carpet has thinned and its twin beds have sunken into visibly concave shapes. I turn the shower faucet, it spits yellow-tinged water. Read more…

While adolescents are not as sexually active as we are led to believe, older Americans are more active than you might think.  From the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel:

Across the nation, and especially in communities that attract a lot of older Americans, the free-love generation is continuing to enjoy an active — if not always healthy — sex life. Read more…

a speech by Don Feder to the Moscow Demographic Summit, June 29, 2011

Imagine that you’re walking in the forest. There’s a layer of fresh snow on the ground. Suddenly you realize that you’re lost. You’re cold. You’re tired. You’re hungry. If that weren’t enough, there are wolves howling in the distance. This is beginning to sound like a Russian novel. Read more…

“The Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and The Future of Humankind” concluded with the adoption of a Declaration demanding that governments everywhere adopt pro-family demographic policies.  The Declaration was adopted by participants at the June 29-30 Summit held at the Russian State Social University, Russia’s largest university.

Translated from Russian, The Declaration states in part: Read more…

An article in today’s New York Times (“Russians Adopt U.S. tactics In Opposing Abortion”) mischaracterizes the upcoming Moscow Demographic Summit: The Family and The Future of Humankind – June 29-30 a the Russian State Social University – as “an international anti-abortion meeting.” Read more…

So much for the over -population groupies.

by Marcus Roberts

Back in 2009, the leadership in Japan realised that there it was facing a massive demographic problem. This problem was not rampant population growth, but the opposite – declining fertility and a growing elderly population. According to The Washington Post: Read more…

PUTIN WANTS TO BOOST RUSSIA’S BIRTHRATE – WORLD CONGRESS OF FAMILIES SAYS PLACE TO START IS AT MOSCOW DEMOGRAPHIC SUMMIT, JUNE 29-30

In a speech late last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged to raise the nation’s birthrate by up to 30% in just three years.  Due to a rapidly falling fertility, Russia has experienced a dramatic population decline, going from 148.5 million people in 1995 to 143 million today.  Unofficial estimates indicate that there are nearly 4 million abortions per year in Russia yet only 1.7 million live births. Read more…