Babies Needed (1)

Demographic collapse

Photo by Chien Pham on Unsplash

It took me a long time to understand this. 

There were clues from my high school reunions. Marycliff was a Catholic girls’ high school; I graduated in the mid-twentieth century. I soon moved far away, and so it was thirty years before I attended my first reunion. By then we were all past child-bearing age, and a pattern was clear: Most had married soon after graduation and had a baby a year --  until, in the late 60s, they finally realized they didn’t have to.

I didn’t get to another reunion until our 50th. My classmates had had large families, typically 4, 5 or even 6 children, and so I expected them to have 16, 25, or even 36 grandchildren. Instead, most had fewer grandchildren than children.

I wrote that off as a specifically Catholic story.

I might have listened more closely to a friend I’ll call Maggie.  She had mentioned, darkly, something about Muslim women having more children than American (or Christian?) women do. She also worries about securing our borders, and urges a strict limit on immigration.  Fundamentally her fear is of replacement, of the disappearance of a culture she considers essentially European (and Christian). 

Disagreeing with Maggie about so much, I skimmed over her population worries. I didn’t notice the idea (declining fertility rates) that I now find so significant.

Other familiar facts might have enlightened me. I knew that Europe’s birthrate had fallen, and saw it as good sign. The world was becoming overpopulated, and the planet was suffering. Fewer people would do less damage. I knew, too, about Japan’s lopsided demographics (too few young supporting the many old).

Those stories struck me as interesting problems faced by other countries, stable and prosperous, who would find a way to cope.

A dramatic message finally reached me: “Demographic Collapse” on the Economist cover, over a picture of a playground slide ending in midair.  Inside, the lead article: “Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences.”

I had been missing two crucial parts of the story. First, the vast difference between a smaller but stable population, on the one hand, and an ever-decreasing population on the other. Having fewer people (in a country, or on the planet) is often a good thing. We are exhausting and despoiling the earth. But having steadily fewer people, each generation smaller than the one before, is quite different.  Eventually it would be disastrous.

Secondly, the issue has become global. (Maggie’s concerns are about the survival of one particular culture.) Coming of age during the years when overpopulation seemed a major threat, I was slow to realize that zero population growth has almost been achieved, and that the slope beyond it is treacherous.

Friends had difficulty with the concept, too. I tried to explain my epiphany to a friend. John’s first, rather cool, response, was “What’s wrong with there being fewer people?” “Nothing,” I said. But, using my hands, I sketched in the air a set of downward steps. The fertility rate (average number of births per woman) in Europe right now is 1.5. The replacement rate is 2.1.   At a fertility rate of 1.5, each generation is 25% smaller than the one before. Eventually, extinction.  

He got that much. But then talked about people moving, populations shifting. Like Maggie, he focused on the US, and unlike her, did not fear immigration. I expanded the lens: The global fertility rate was 5.0 in 1950.  Today it’s 2.3, and steadily declining.

The global fertility rate, 5.0 in 1950, is now 2.3, and declining.

John could follow me there, but was a bit amused: “We’re not going to disappear. Something will happen.”

Well, yes. I’m not predicting extinction of our species. Something will happen. The interesting question is what.

Fertility rates are closely tied to affluence. Richer countries (and within them, richer families) have fewer children. So one possibility is a population slashed by disaster – war, famine, or plague -- after which, in a poorer and more perilous world, fertility rates increase. (Remember, the issue is rate, not number.) History tells us just how plausible that future is.

But it’s also quite possible that disasters of that scale will be averted. In that future, perhaps cultures worldwide will change, so that families with children will come to be cherished and supported. That seems logical, and eminently desirable.

As it happens, the world supplies a number of natural experiments. Many developed countries understand what it took me so long to realize. How are they coping? Stay tuned.

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AfterWords

Abortion is a separate issue, but often pulled in here. It’s claimed that forbidding it would increase our population. It would, but not as much as is commonly believed. Where abortion is criminalized, people are more careful not to get pregnant. And if someone wants only two children, having the first earlier than they would like won’t change that eventual number. It’s pregnancies after someone has all the children they believe they can manage that add to total births.

Further: Children born because abortion has been banned are usually born into tougher circumstances. Pregnancies are terminated because the potential parent feels unready to raise a child, or another child, right now. People who are too young, too poor, or too alone to provide what the child would need.