Not Enough Babies

I’m immersed in enjoying a new grandbaby right now. And this past week a niece and nephew both had their first babies, so there’s a sudden rise in little second cousins.

New granddaughter, Little Social Sphere II

In contrast, someone shared an article with me about the rather sudden drop in fertility rates here in the US. I’ve written about this issue before, but it has been a while. Principles are still true, but there’s updated data since I wrote these:

·         Demographic Winter,[i] June 16, 2011

·         Why Civilizations Die, parts I, II, III, beginning February 3, 2012

·         Death of Marriage, in three parts, but particularly part II, July 1, 2011   

If you’re new to the idea that declining birthrates are a bad thing, let me repeat this scenario on Greece that I refer to in “Demographic Winter.” This is from a 2010 United Families International article, using Greece’s 2008 population of 11,237.074.

If you consider that a generation is about 27 years, and you have a fertility rate of 1.4 (Greece’s is actually 1.37), then you’ll lose a third of the population every generation: 

Generation 1                 11,237,094 – 3,745,698 = 7.491,396

Generation 2                   7,491,396 – 2,497,132 = 4,994,264

Generation 3                   4,994,264 – 1,664,755 – 3, 329,509 

As I explained in “Demographic Winter,”

In a little over half a century the population is likely to decline to under 30% of its current population. Without disease or war. Voluntarily. 

The cutoff seems to be a fertility rate of 1.4. In the history of the world, no population has ever recovered once hitting that level. Right now the following are at, near, or below that level: 

United Kingdom             1.66

Portugal                        1.49

Austria                          1.42

Russia                          1.34

Spain                            1.31

Japan                           1.27

Czech Rep.                   1.24

South Korea                  1.21

Hong Kong                   0.97 

OK, so we’ve established that decline is looking bad mathematically. For the social and economic impact, read that whole piece.

In the piece I read this week, “The Great Baby Bust of 2017,” blogger on demographics Lyman Stone talks about a sudden drop in US fertility rates. For many years, while other countries declined, we held steady at replacement levels. However, a closer look showed that immigrants had been bumping up our fertility data. US-born citizens have been a little over 1.7, which isn’t as bad as much of Europe, but it’s sure not good. But now even the immigrant rates can’t pull us up to replacement.

Screen shot of chart in Stone's article

Stone uses the latest data, along with some extrapolation:

If you google “USA Total Fertility Rate,” you will see a graph from the World Bank, with the most recent data showing 2015 TFR of 1.84. As such, many people wrongly believe that U.S. TFR is 1.84.

I’m here to tell you that U.S. TFR is actually 1.77, and falling with alarming speed.

We have provisional-but-complete fertility data for 2016 showing a total fertility rate of about 1.82, so slightly below the 2015 level. However, since then, fertility has fallen still further. We have monthly birth data through June of 2017 which allows us to estimate total fertility over the previous 12 months. Remember, total fertility is demographically-controlled, so it is not impacted by the age composition of the population, simply showing age-controlled birth rates….

Fertility has fallen sharply over the last 6 months or so, even as the economy has picked up steam. The most plausible forecast for 2017 calendar-year total fertility is 1.77; which, by the way, I’m not the only person who thinks that; professional demographic consultancy firms independently arrive at the same conclusions.

To be clear, in 2008 and 2009, the U.S. had replacement-rate fertility. Since then, we’ve fallen to about 0.3 kids below replacement.

Stone uses a helpful illustration of what this means.

Here’s an example of what their fertility might look like in 2008 vs. 2017:

 

Screen shot of chart in Stone's article

In 2008, your friends Emma-thru-Emily all would have had about 2 kids if their lifetime fertility followed 2008 age-specific birth rates. Harper and her husband, however, decided to go for a 3rd, because they wanted to have the best of three children and name him Lyman, named for the demographer who inspired them to do society a favor and have a third child.

But in 2017, things have changed. Emma ended up breaking up with the guy she thought she might marry because he turned out to be kind of a deadbeat, so she didn’t have that kid she hoped to have in her 20s. Olivia got a great job… which has really long hours, and she really loves the job and she loves how comfortable it has made her and her husband’s life, but there’s no way she and Bob can care for a kid right now: life is just too busy. And Harper? Well, Harper and her husband were enticed to take a few extra vacations by generous credit card rewards programs and super-low mistake fares online, so they used up their vacation time and their disposable income, and so a third kid just isn’t in the cards anymore.

The important thing to understand here is these are big changes in your friends’ lives, and they happened really fast. This is not some gradual easing into lower fertility, but a pretty speedy change.

Something else caught my attention in Lyman’s piece. He uses a graphic showing rates in all 50 states:

Screen shot of chart in Stone's article

This chart is messy, I know, and there are no labels, but the point is to see that there are lots of “down” trends in 2016 and 2017. And by the way, that highest line that declined a lot… that’s Utah.

Guys.

It’s even happening to the Mormons.

That’s my people. We love families. We love children. We value children. But something cultural is happening. I’m hypothesizing that it has to do with a combination of reasons: less value of marriage in society, less value of children in society, less confidence in being able to afford children, and maybe less willingness to sacrifice comfort and financial stability for more children when a couple already has one or two.

The decisions of Stone’s Emma-to-Harper example is pretty realistic. The economy is a big factor when it has been so uncertain for so long. Add in the societal pressure defining children as a burden instead of the character-building joy that they are, and people weigh having another child against having a better home or car or travel experiences for them and the child or two that they do have.

I’m wondering whether a consistent improvement in the economy will bring back the confidence to have more children. But I think we need more cultural shift than economic.

In “Why Civilizations Die” I refer to David P. Goldman’s book How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam Is Dying Too). Goldman proposes that loss of faith is the underlying cause of fertility decline:

“The truth is that humankind cannot survive without faith, specifically faith that our lives have meaning beyond the mere span of our years. Civilizations that lose their faith also lose their desire to continue and fail to reproduce themselves” (p. 16).

Goldman saw the US and Israel as exceptional, because they are countries of faith. And faith is tied in with seeing ourselves as covenant people—with inalienable rights granted by God. Cultures that see government or the collective as the giver of rights, in general, see themselves as being owed, rather than purposely connecting themselves to a future. As I summarize in “Why Civilizations Die,”

Our children pay a rising portion of their wages to the government, which doles out elderly care as it sees fit. So there is a disconnect between the number of children an individual has and the amount of care he receives in old age.

The disconnect means there is no incentive to personally have more children. We look at the quarter million dollars it costs to raise a child, and think about whether we would prefer to spend that income on ourselves instead. The only social reason to have children who contribute to collective elderly care is altruism; there is incentive to freeload.

Those who have a “faith” reason for having children, however, still have them. On the individual and national/cultural level, people who believe only in themselves fail to find something worth caring enough about to reach into the future.

We need more babies. 

More important, we need more faith so we will grasp the life-affirming choice and civilizational need to have more babies.

___________________________

[1] The title “Demographic Winter” refers to a documentary by that name, which I link in the blog post about it.

Long Game Players

There’s plenty to worry about without even looking at international relations, but sometimes you need to do what you don’t want to.

I wrote last week about Syria, all I want to write and beyond. But I’ve had a specific question about our president and his long-term strategy. I’ve talked this over with the Spherical Model household, and we seem to have a consensus opinion in answer to my puzzlement.

It is a given that our president is a power monger. He loves control, and seeks more control wherever he can get it. Nevertheless, he acts in ways that weaken the United States on the international scene—apology tour, leading from behind, setting red lines which he manages by hoping they won’t be crossed and then dithering when they are. He has verbalized his belief that America is no more exceptional than any other country, and he believes we have been arrogant, so he is purposely taking us down a few pegs.

Here at home he seems pleased that the economy falters and sputters, and gleefully proud that more and more people become dependent on government. He has devalued the dollar, and our credit rating, to the point that we are at serious risk of losing our economic status in the world. He seems pleased at this new depressing normal.

So my question is, why would someone who seeks ever increasing degrees of power act in ways that reduce his status? What is his long game?

Does he see a path from what he is doing to increased power, such that he could leap from the lowly position of US President to something bigger, something more global?

I think he does see that path. I think he holds the belief that claiming connection with the Europeans and third-world nations, letting them know he’s not like the rest of us ugly Americans, will raise his image in their eyes. And their eyes are more important to him than the eyes of his fellow Americans, who are beneath him—evident in the sneering and condescension showing up his ubiquitous speeches.

He’s the un-American president. It’s a little like that phrase “compassionate conservative”; it implies that the special “compassionate” ones are different from the run-of-the-mill conservatives, who are, then, by definition, compassionless.  He thinks of himself as something other than American, and he believes that having such a self-perception makes him more appealing to the world.

But, as in most things (maybe everything) he is wrong wrong wrong! No thinking person in any country actually likes our president for his anti-Americanism. If they are our enemies, and thus anti-American themselves, they might like what he is doing—the less for them to fight against. But no one supports him as a better leader for tearing down the world’s greatest country—the economic, social, and freedom dream of the oppressed everywhere. No one trusts him as reliable. No one would say, “He’s so wise; why don’t we make him ruler of the world?”

So, if he is a power monger (and I think that is evident), and if he sees the US presidency as merely a career step to even greater power, then the logical conclusion is--he must be deluded.

On the bright side, concerns about him becoming the Left-Behind-Series style anti-Christ world tyrant are unnecessary. Likely his future role will be a more feckless Jimmy Carter, occasionally sniping from the sidelines, but without a listening public.

Do we need to worry instead about Putin? I’m not sure. After the “rescue” Putin did to dissuade the president from a Syrian strike, the metaphor was going around that Obama was playing cards while Putin was owning him at three-dimensional chess.

Star Trek 3D Chess
image found here

I was an adult by the end of the Cold War, so I’m beyond trusting anyone from the KGB. I’m sure Putin wants increased power, and I’m sure he’s playing an actual long game to get it. But I have my doubts that he can do it.

There’s a new book by Ilan Berman, called Implosion, subtitled, The End of Russia and What It Means for America. The author spoke with Michael Medved on radio Thursday (last third of first hour; these details come from that conversation). Much of his theory relates to demographics. Russian culture and people, Slavic Christians we could say, are disappearing. Russians lose half a million of their population a year, to death and out-migration. Life expectancy for men is about 60 years, a good two decades shorter than American men. Women live longer, to about 73, but still on par with Saudi Arabia, well short of Western longevity. Birth rates are well below replacement. The population will be 25% smaller, and still shrinking, by mid-century.

Meanwhile immigrant Muslims abort less, drink less, and support the traditional family more, so their numbers are growing. Some projections show Muslims will reach 50% of the population by 2050, subsuming the native population.

Young Russians are leaving in droves. A shocking 40% of 18-35-year-olds are considering leaving the country. The most popular Russian blog is titled (translated) “Time to Scram.” In the US and Canada there are large, thriving Russian populations, including scientists, engineers, symphony musicians. When a country is bleeding so many if it’s intellectual talent, that’s a county in trouble. And as long as the country continues as an uncertain threat to intellectual property, the bleeding will continue.

So, while Putin is posturing as powerful on the international stage, his country is floundering at home. It is my guess Putin will not be able to satisfy his power mongering hunger either.

Here's the better, Spherical Model long game: limited government that fills the role of protecting natural rights, free enterprise, adherence to the Ten Commandments, and strong families may not lead to world domination but will lead to unequaled flourishing.

Demographic Winter

Have we talked about Demographic Winter? There are two videos, one by that name and a second, Demographic Bomb, by the same producers, about the worldwide worry that we don’t have enough children being born. The video trailers are worth seeing. 

Here are the basics, if you’re not up to speed. Replacement rate is 2.1 children per female. Most of the industrialized countries in the world (and also many of the less advanced countries as well) have below replacement levels. The US is approximately right at replacement rates—but only because of immigrants with larger families. The non-immigrant population is at about 1.7. 

I reread an article recently (it’s from United Families International, from May 2010) that did the math, using Greece’s 2008 population of 11,237.074. If you consider that a generation is about 27 year, and you have a fertility rate of 1.4 (Greece’s is actually 1.37), then you’ll lose a third of the population every generation: 

Generation 1               11,237,094 – 3,745,698 = 7.491,396

Generation 2                 7,491,396 – 2,497,132 = 4,994,264

Generation 3                 4,994,264 – 1,664,755 – 3, 329,509 

So in a little over half a century the population is likely to declined to under 30% of it’s current population. Without disease or war. Voluntarily. 

The cutoff seems to be a fertility rate of 1.4. In the history of the world, no population has ever recovered once hitting that level. Right now the following are at, near, or below that level: 

United Kingdom         1.66

Portugal                      1.49

Austria                        1.42

Russia                         1.34

Spain                          1.31

Japan                          1.27

Czech Rep.                 1.24

South Korea               1.21

Hong Kong                0.97 

There’s a graphic I need to show you, about how this involves economics. [I'm using my trusty white board, just like homeschool.] The population as a whole consists of producers and nonproducers. Typically these are related to generation. Children are nonproducers that must be supported by producers. The elderly and infirm are nonproducers that must be supported by producers insofar as they can’t support themselves from income left over from their producing period.

A healthy growing population is shaped like the diagram below. Producers are plentiful to take care of the elderly, and there are enough children to replace the producers as they age.

But the typical population shape for a declining population looks like this below. The elderly is the most sizable demographic. Producers are hard-pressed to take care of them. And the even smaller population of children is going to find it even harder to take care of not only themselves but that growing aging population.

A friend of mine who has been involved in family issues worldwide since the mid-1990s first let me know about this issue. He was with his family on a trip to Italy at one point, and they went to, I think, Disney World there. There was an exhibit that talked about the demographic problems in that country, and some of the solutions. Italy isn’t on the list above, but I believe it’s under 1.4, like many EU countries, and parts of it are significantly lower—where they pay people to have babies or give people bonuses to come there following their education to live. The presentation talked about the difficulty of producers supplying the needs of the elderly, and my friend was thinking—the obvious solution is to encourage more births. But that’s not what they said—instead they encouraged more women to join the workforce. Women in the workforce must, of necessity (with very few exceptions) have fewer children than they would or could have as stay-at-home mothers. 

So is the problem likely to solve itself when people wake up and realize they have a problem and then start having more children? Historically no.  

One of the hallmarks of a thriving civilization is valuing the family and prizing children. If that is not where we are, then we need to change—before it’s too late.