ChristianityToday online has this interesting interview with Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle, which discusses the impact of declining fertility rates.
The interview is at times interesting and at times frightening. For example, Longman describes the crash of social services, such as Social Security and Medicare, in an era with fewer young people to prop them up. Longman sees a return to the era when children had to take more care of their aging parents simply because there was no other service to do so.
Longman also points out that while pro-low birthrate people consider fewer people to be better for the environment, the opposite has been true.
On all these counts, I believe progressives are in denial. Today in the United States, for example, we have far cleaner air and water than we did in the 1940s, when the population was just half its current size. That's no paradox. Population growth is a spur to more efficient and cleaner use of resources, so our cities are no longer choked with smoke from steam engines and our cars get far better mileage and are far less polluting. Similarly, population growth is what drove us as a society to find far more productive ways to grow food. Thanks to increased crop yields, per capita food production is higher than ever, even as world population surpasses 6 billion. At the same time, there is more forested land in the United States than in the 19th century because so much less acreage is needed for farmland.
His argument is that demand has created the opportunities to invent cleaner, more efficient ways of making food or providing transportation. This makes sense, since we tend to be a reactionary lot and only change our habits when forced to do so.
The most interesting part of the interview comes at the end when Longman is asked who will be inheriting the earth in a time of declining birth rates? The answer isn't really surprising, but certainly is a nightmare for liberals like Amanda Marcotte.
The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of the children that are being born are being produced by a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?
The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.
To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, or Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, devout member of these Abrahamic religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.
In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and nonbelievers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent. Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. Meanwhile, of course, the childless stand no chance of passing along their values to their progeny.
The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default. The West's total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. Let us just hope that this new age of faith will also be an age of peace.
It is unsurprising to me that the religious will inherit the earth. After all, they are the only ones who think children are important enough to continue our species.
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