I’m distrustful of social engineers, regardless of whether they spring from the right or the left. Perhaps this is a function of my Gen X cynicism.
Speaking of generations. A lot of folks on the traditional, conservative right are alarmed by falling birthrates, and the shrinking of recent generations. And since we’ve decided, through our immigration policies, that we won’t be importing young Haitians and Nigerians to fill the gap, US deaths will inevitably outnumber births—perhaps within a decade. All this, according to a recent position paper from the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning group of busybodies.
The Heritage Foundation proposes a variety of measures in response to the perceived crisis, some arguably reasonable, some laughingly ham-fisted. Among other initiatives, the Heritage Foundation proposes a “marriage boot camp”.
We’re all going to marry up and start having babies, if the Heritage Foundation has its way. I’m not sure where a never married, childless 57-year-old like myself fits into all of this. Will the Heritage Foundation issue me a young, fertile bride if I attend a marriage boot camp? Just asking.
The demographic alarm is not entirely the stuff of fantasy. But there is another, more historically grounded way to look at it.
The history of birthrates is not one of linear increase, but of rising and falling in waves. Birthrates were high in the pre-modern era, but were offset by high death rates. The early industrial era saw a population surge, as living standards matched the high birth rates with longer life expectancies.
Birthrates in France, however, began falling in the 1800s. Birthrates plunged throughout the world during the Great Depression. They rose everywhere after World War II, contributing to the so-called Baby Boom (1946 to 1964).
And now global birthrates are falling, continuing a trend that began, throughout much of the industrialized world, in the early 1970s. Even champion breeders like India and Brazil have seen recent birth rate declines. Nigeria remains a fecund nation, but its birthrates are falling.
Birth rates seem low now because the Baby Boom generation, born between 1946 and 1964, has now reached an advanced age. The oldest Baby Boomers will turn 80 this year. The youngest are now in their sixties. And they outnumber every generation that followed them.
This will mean a period in which most societies are “top heavy”—more oldsters than youngsters, more senior citizens than newborns. And yes, it may mean that some populations temporarily decrease.
I say “temporarily”, because human behavior is not fixed. Right now, Americans, Japanese, Germans, and Italians—all beneficiaries of the postwar Baby Boom—are having far fewer children, just as this giant demographic wave of Baby Boomers reaches its elder years.
But let’s fast-forward thirty years or so. By that time, the Baby Boomers won’t just be old, almost all of them will be gone. (For that matter, I’ll be 87 years old in thirty years, if I’m still alive. Many of us Gen Xers will be fading away, too.)
The young generation of 2056, just to pick a year, may be much more eager for children. In fact, history suggests that they will be. Thirty years from now, young Americans may be breeding like coneys.
Here’s the point: unless the birth rate goes to zero, no country is ever more than one generation away from population replenishment. The post-World War II era proved that. So did Europe’s recovery after the Black Death, which killed off thirty to fifty percent of Europe’s population.
If Europe could survive the Black Death and World War II, then we can be reasonably confident that the US, Japan, and other nations will survive the current drop in birthrates. And it’s unlikely that cockamamie schemes like marriage camps are going to make a significant dent in the current trend, anyway. At the end of the day, people are going to do what they want, the fretting and scheming of social engineers notwithstanding.
-ET