File this one under “Duh! Ya’ think?” We exterminate a third of the offspring who would have otherwise been supporting us in our old age, and then we wonder why the Social Security system didn’t work out the way we had planned.
by Steven W. Mosher
As I write, there is a battle royal underway in the Philippine Congress. On the one side are the Planned Parenthood types, backed by well-funded international organizations, who are attempting to ram through legislation that would cripple the Filipino birth rate. On the other side stand those who believe that the most precious resource of the Philippines is its people, and who object to the use of what some call “human pesticides” to control the Filipino population. Read more…
Two articles caught my attention recently. The first was “Japan population shrinks by record in 2010”. The title should be self-explanatory. Already the most aged nation on earth, Japan’s demographic winter in 2010 was the most severe on record.
The result of more and more of their young people “waiting to get married and choosing to have fewer children because of careers and lifestyle issues” is that the proportion of the population over the age of 65 is increasing ever rapidly. (25% now, 40% by 2050) Consider the strain on the economic and social resources of any nation when 4 out of 10 citizens are past retirement age. Read more…
One thing that ought to be obvious from looking at this chart is that birthrates are indeed falling all over the world. You must realize that not all of the consequences of this are going to be good.
I find it odd that people dispute the notion that birth rates and other issues relating to population matter a great deal to society and the composition of society. People who comment here attribute my views on this matter to my religious fanaticism or whatever.
I have frequently observed the irony that atheists are often so insistent in their trumpeting of Darwin. Without commenting at all on the merits of Darwin’s ideas, it’s easy to see how secularists of all stripes are Darwin’s biggest losers. They do, after all, have the fewest children. I note with further amusement, that some of our commenters want me to believe that people of my point of view are quickly to die out and disappear from the world. Seeing as how my wife is busily gestating our fourth child, I hardly can see things their way.
But don’t take it from me. Take it from a gay, atheist (I venture to say an “anti-theist”) who recognizes and laments that fact. Witness this article.
What’s that famous quote, by Edna St. Vincent Millay? Oh, yes: “I love humanity but I hate people.” It’s a sentiment that captures my normal misanthropically tinged type of humanitarianism well, but it roars apropos on some particular occasions.
You see, right here in his first paragraph, I already disagree with Bering, the author of this hilarious article. For me, I love human beings, but Read more…
How good are your children at relating to their grandparents? How would they respond if granny developed Alzheimer’s? These questions beg an even bigger one: how will societies with an average of 2 or less children per woman cope with a burgeoning elderly population and a growing worldwide epidemic of dementia? South Korea has come up with answers in a remarkable campaign. Read more…
by Mariette Ulrich
“Contraception could be free under health care law”, announced a pre-election Washington Post headline. A “panel of experts” is supposed to be meeting this month “to begin considering what kind of preventive care for women should be covered at no cost to the patient, as required under President Barack Obama’s overhaul.” Up front in the push to make all birth control free is, not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood. Read more…
From Weekly Standard
What China imposed on its population, we’re adopting voluntarily.
For the last several months, Chinese officials have been floating the idea of relaxing the country’s famed “One-Child” policy. One-Child has long been admired in the West by environmentalists, anti-population doomsayers, and some of our sillier professional wise men. In Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008), for instance, Tom Friedman lauded the policy for saving China from “a population calamity.” What Friedman and others fail to understand is that China is built upon a crumbling demographic base. One-Child may or may not have “saved” China from overpopulation, but it has certainly created a demographic catastrophe. Read more…
Enviro-whackos invented the “population bomb” to scare people into compliance with their ideas. But night time ghost stories can only scare people for so long. At some point, the facts become so undeniable that even enviro-whackos have to admit they were wrong. (Emphasis added).
A green myth is on the march. It wants to blame the world’s overbreeding poor people for the planet’s peril. It stinks. And on World Population Day, I encourage fellow environmentalists not to be seduced. Read more…
Lefties are fond of condemning the Right for our worries about Demographic Winter.
They’re fond of condemning us, but not so keen about disputing us. That’s because the facts needed to rebut our worries are few and far between.
But there are points to be made in rebuttal. I’ve never seen any such point wielded by a Lefty. So, let me call your attention to one made by an EEEEEEEEVIL Right winger, John Derbyshire. It comes from this week’s broadcast of his gloomy but hilarious podcast “Radio Derb.”
This is a favorite selling point of the immigration boosters. Japan, China, the European countries all have below-replacement birthrates, and so aging populations. Read more…
Childlessness among women aged 40-44 has increased dramatically since even the baby bust years of the 1970s.
(CBS) Nearly 1 in 5 American women beyond childbearing years never gave birth as fewer couples, particularly higher-educated whites, view having children as necessary to a good marriage. Read more…
The Social Retreat from Children and How it is Affecting America
Interesting for those who are interested. 
Interesting to see another perspective on this issue since it has been hotly debated on this blog. More food for thought:
Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow
According to newly released government statistics, the U.S. birth rate has dropped below replacement level.
The fact that the birth rate is falling comes as no surprise to Colin Mason, director of media production at the Population Research Institute (PRI), who explains that “our birth rate’s actually been dropping for a while.” Read more…
Ari’s post about Philip Longman’s book, The Empty Cradle, reminded me that Dr J’s Bookshelf has several titles on Demographic Decline. My little collection proves Ari’s point: concern about demographic decline is not the exclusive province of the Left. including Longman’s book. Longman is at the New America Foundation and Schwartz Senior Fellow at the Washington Monthly. His latest book is called, The Next Progressive Era.
Read more…
I am flattered by the attention from Daily Kos blogger, Dante Atkins. Sadly, this post is short on substance, and long on ad hominem attacks and innuendo. I will leave aside for now, his silly attack on our logo, of all things. I will ignore his mangling of the Biblical story of Ruth, except to note one thing: I chose Ruth because she is a unifying figure, loved by all the major faith groups. Catholics love her; Jews love her; Evangelicals love her; Mormons love her. Everybody loves Ruth, it seems, except for leftist bloggers. I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine how leftists like Dante expect to build a coalition when they alienate every major faith tradition in America. Read more…
Phillip Longman in his book The Empty Cradle discusses the possible social impact of declining birth rates. Longman is a progressive. His most recent book is one that praises the politics of the Progressive Era. The politics of the Progressive Era gives right wingers like me nausea. Read more…
Low birth rate a problem? Making abortion illegal seems like a good idea to me. I’m skeptical that Korea (or any abortion nation) would actually pull it off, though.
Anna Choi
Unless Koreans have more kids, their nation could disappear. A dynamic gynaecologist has a plan to reverse the trend by applying the existing laws on abortion.
Korea has the second-lowest birth rate in the world – so low that the government has reversed years of pressure on couples to have just one or two children. It now desperately wants to raise the birth rate. But why not reduce the abortion rate, asks obstetrician and gynaecologist Anna Choi. Her lobby group, Gynob, has created quite a stir with its demand that abortion be criminalised and abortion doctors prosecuted. We interviewed Dr Choi via email. Read more…
A great article about the coming demographic winter. From the article:
News of a population bust might come as a surprise to many Americans. More than two centuries after English scholar Thomas Malthus argued that population growth exceeded the earth’s ability to feed us—“The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man,” he wrote—the media continue to warn us about impending environmental catastrophe and mass starvation caused by an exploding human population. These Malthusian alarms persist even though the last 200 years have proved Malthus completely wrong. As the world’s population shot up, starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution, worldwide standards of living rose in tandem. People proved far more resourceful in expanding food production, tapping new veins of natural resources, and inventing technologies to accommodate a growing population than Malthus dreamed possible. When mass deprivation has occurred in modern times, it has invariably resulted from political tyranny and social chaos, not from an inability to derive enough resources from the earth.
A US judge granted political asylum to a German homeschooling family that is in danger of losing their children to the state.
Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, of Memphis, Tennessee, said: “We can’t expect every country to follow our constitution. The world might be a better place if it did. However, the rights being violated here are basic human rights that no country has a right to violate.” He observed: “Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution… therefore, they are eligible for asylum…” Read more…
I’m seeing good articles like these more and more. Surely the citizens of these countries must know what’s up. But why aren’t they doing anything about it? Perhaps it’s the “someone else will solve the problem. I don’t have to do anything” mentality.
Steven Malanga
In Kamikatsu, on the Japanese island of Shikoku, officials have set up an agricultural cooperative whose members log on to computers daily to check the fluctuating prices of the produce that they grow. Then they go out and pick whatever is fetching the best price that day. Unusual, yes, but what’s truly surprising about this cooperative is the average age of its members: 70. In a country where lots of folks retire at 60, Kamikatsu’s residents are working well into their senior years—and they’re doing so not only to buoy retirement earnings but also to energize the local economy. With nearly half of the town’s residents 65 and older, the government realized that there simply wasn’t enough of a traditional workforce available to build or staff most typical industries. Read more…
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