Demography

Demographers, sociologists and your mother-in-law want to know: why aren’t people having as many kids?

Canada recorded its lowest-ever fertility rate for the second year in a row in 2023, according to Statistics Canada, at 1.26 children born per woman. It now joins the ranks of “lowest-low” fertility countries, including South Korea, Spain, Italy and Japan.

Statistics Canada said the drop between 2022 and 2023 specifically reflects an increase in the number of women of childbearing age, but also noted the fertility rate has been steadily declining for more than 15 years.

Of course there may be reasons unremarked upon in the article.

Imagine being 42, child-free, and without a care in the world.

The right hates this. pic.twitter.com/anZZVHgyYI

— Angela Belcamino (@AngelaBelcamino) September 28, 2024

Given the negative blowback that hasn’t let up since it resurfaced, vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance doubtless regrets his sarcastic allusion to elite female Democrats, including Kamala Harris, as “childless cat ladies” in a 2021 interview with then Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

For decades, environmentalists have warned that there are ‘too many people’ on the planet. Apparently, the world is facing mass famine, ecological disaster and total societal collapse if the global population continues to expand. But what if the opposite is true? According to demographer Paul Morland, author of new book No One Left, it is not overpopulation, but depopulation that poses the greatest threat to mankind. All over the world, even in poorer countries, fertility rates are plummeting. Unless we reverse this demographic decline, humanity could soon struggle to sustain itself.

The Japanese government has begun to consult young people about their interest in marriage – or lack thereof – as Japan continues to struggle with a demographic crisis that is expected to result in a sharp population decline over the next decades.

The Children and Families Agency, launched in April 2023, held its first working group meeting on Friday to support young people in their efforts to find partners through dating, matchmaking and other means. Attenders included those considering marriage in the future and experts versed in the challenges facing younger people.

Female choice is the greatest force in nature. It can make or destroy species – and civilisations.

We live in a period in which the consequences of female choice-making are more significant than they have ever been. This is because it has now become possible for women to choose, to a greater extent than ever before conceivable, whether to have children at all, how many, and with whom – from a potentially almost limitless array of potential partners. Nobody should (I hope it goes without saying) advocate for a moment returning to a time when they were not so free to choose. But we have not yet even begun to reckon with the consequences of this – in historical terms – extraordinary development.

The debate around a profoundly influential scientific experiment, Universe 25, may give us some insight.

Ivan Pavlov’s salivating dogs, Burrhus Frederic Skinner’s ping pong-playing pigeons, Harry Harlow’s love-starved rhesus monkeys — these laboratory animals have entered into the pantheon of behavioral science, aiding us in our understanding of conditioning responses, non-contingent reinforcement, and the importance of contact comfort, among other phenomena. Yet these renowned experimental subjects, through no fault of their own, cannot shed much light on those existential questions concerning the fate of our own species. Enter John Bumpass Calhoun and his self-destructive colonies of rats and mice.

It turns out that babies are good little assets to have around. Despite famed catastrophist Paul Ehrlich (still) warning of imminent population-driven “famines, pandemics, water shortages, climate disasters, resource wars,” the earth is awash in natural resources, with some experts attributing the abundance to humans having acted fruitfully by multiplying.