“Where are all the children?” My three-year-old recently asked this after we arrived at the park. Fair question, kid. All too often the swings hang empty, pot shops have replaced ice cream parlours and stores are void of little feet. Though low fertility gained some attention during COVID, when fertility fell even further, we mostly avoid the topic or assume the long-term decline is a good thing.
The new push for more babies: How tech elites think it will save the planet
Soon after China reported that it saw more deaths than births last year, its first population dip in 60 years, Elon Musk, father of 10, again sounded the “population collapse” alarm, tweeting that a decline in birth rates globally heralds an “existential problem to humanity, not overpopulation!”
FOR the first time since records began in 1845, most children are now born outside marriage, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. In England and Wales, 51.3 per cent of 624,828 live births in 2021 were to women not married or in a civil partnership, while 48.7 per cent of babies were born in wedlock.
At the beginning of the 20th century, 96 per cent of births were within marriage, but this fell to 80 per cent in 1985, 70 per cent in 1991 and 60 per cent in 2001.
Japan’s prime minister says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate.
Fumio Kishida said it was a case of “now or never.”
Japan – population 125 million – is estimated to have had fewer than 800,000 births last year. In the 1970s, that figure was more than two million.
Birth rates are slowing in many countries, including Japan’s neighbours.
But the issue is particularly acute in Japan as life expectancy has risen in recent decades, meaning there are a growing number of older people, and a declining numbers of workers to support them.
Although Mark Steyn writes knowledgeably about a great many topics, he keeps returning to what he calls the biggest story of our time—the planet’s demographic death spiral.
The decline in population is a global phenomenon, but it’s happening faster in the West and in Japan. For a description of where it all ends, Steyn recommends P.D. James dystopian novel, The Children of Men.
Also … PM Meloni Meets With Pope To Discuss Demographic Crisis and Pro-Natalist Campaign
This week, for the first time since assuming high office in October, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Pope Francis to discuss several pressing topics facing Italy, namely its severe demographic crisis and how to solve it.
Italian demographer: As of now, we will find ourselves entering the second half of this century with completely empty maternity wards.
To understand what Italy will be like in a generation, you don’t need to have the talent of Jean Dutourd, the writer and member of the Académie Française who in 1975 published “2024”, a great novel where he imagines a country where they no longer have children:
“On the street, I saw a child. He was shaking hands with his dad, in his thirties. What a curious sight! Already a man in his thirties is not something you see often. Especially accompanied by a child. I was enraptured. And I wasn’t the only one to be. Everyone turned to look. A lady stopped, a gentleman dropped his walking stick. Dad was aware of the strangeness of the situation. He looked provocatively at passers-by, as if to tell them: ‘All right, I’m young, I have a son, I go for a walk together, I talk to him in front of everyone. I love him, I introduce him to life, or at least to what I know of it. If anyone is bothered by all this, come and say it to my face!’ The faces of the people offered an exhilarating scene: a little disgusted, a little scandalized, but above all amazed”.
“Only 3% of 18-24 year olds identify as Anglicans, and only 5% as Catholics.”
Mass migration and the collapse of religion among the young have transformed Europe. And it’s transforming America at a slower rate.
Unlike interest rates or the weather, long-run demographic trends are highly predictable. Today, we are facing a demographic storm that will have far-reaching impacts on the economy and geopolitics.
But automation! Hasn’t Canada been a productivity laggard by choice of the corporate class? They must be missing their slaves.
Fewer babies will be born in all of Europe than in Nigeria alone.
In Europe, “at the rate at which things are going, the population will have halved before 2070, with the continent at risk of losing 400 million inhabitants by 2100,” noted James Pomeroy, an economist at China’s HSBC bank.
The growth of the world population has already reached its lowest rate since 1950 and Europe’s population will continue to contract until the end of the century, noted the Financial Times, citing the United Nations World Population Prospects report.
A collateral question is: where?
White supremacy does not explain the disparity between races
“… Unfortunately for these moral entrepreneurs, the current gaps in life expectancy confound simple white supremacy hot takes: Asians live by far the longest, followed by Hispanics, then whites, blacks and finally Native Americans.”
When I was a kid, everyone was worried about the “population explosion.” Paul Ehrlich’s book, “The Population Bomb,” was a runaway bestseller.
This led to a lot of dystopian science fiction, like Harry Harrison’s novel, “Make Room, Make Room,” which became the famous movie “Soylent Green.” It also led to a lot of policy changes, from China’s disastrous one-child policy to many policies in industrialized nations aimed at people having fewer children later in life.
President Putin has revived a Soviet-era award for women who have ten or more children as Russia faces a demographic crisis that has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
Joseph Stalin established the “Mother Heroine” title in 1944 to encourage large families after the death of tens of millions of Soviet citizens during the Second World War. More than 400,000 women received the award before it was scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The majority of babies were born to unmarried mothers in Britain for the first time in recorded history, the Office for National Statistics revealed on Tuesday.
ONS figures showed that there of the 624,828 live births recorded in England and Wales last year, over 320,000 were born out of wedlock, compared to 320,713 that were born to married parents or those in a civil partnership.
There is a deeper crisis than the energy one, invisible, not addressed by signing an Algerian or Azerbaijani contract.
Germany is beginning to ration heating, electricity in the streets and water in swimming pools. It looks like news from 1942, but instead it is from 2022 and comes from the Financial Times.
Europe’s largest and richest country is running out of energy after Russia decided to cut gas supplies, causing prices to skyrocket and triggering the biggest crisis since 1973. “The situation is more than dramatic,” said Axel Gedaschko, head of the federation of German construction companies GdW. “The social peace of Germany is in grave danger”.
“Hamburg could ration hot water,” headlines Der Spiegel. Economy Minister Robert Habeck has appealed to the population to save energy and take shorter showers. Vonovia, a colossus of residential properties, lowers the temperature of the gas heating of its tenants between 11 pm and 6 am. The district of Lahn-Dill in Frankfurt has suspended hot water in its schools and gyms since mid-September, Düsseldorf closes a huge swimming pool complex, Berlin lowers the thermostat of outdoor pools and Cologne street lighting to 70 for one hundred starting at 11.00pm.
The adage “be careful of what you wish for, you may just get it” most certainly applies to recent efforts by black political leaders to expand ballot access. Their reasoning seems alluring: voting has been their ticket to progress, and the more blacks who vote, the greater the progress. A corollary is that such expansion would also help their political allies, notably Hispanics and other minorities of color, and thus build a mighty coalition. Moreover, open borders bring more Hispanics, and this will, eventually, swell yet further this alliance which, it is assumed, will be led by blacks.
