[It's not just Western civilization under threat. A few months ago, the WSJ reported on the "demographic winter" overtaking the world. More:
It's not a matter of not having enough money. Some rich countries, like Japan, make generous financial provision for child-raising. It's not working:
So what? you might say. There are too many people on the planet anyway. That's incredibly short-sighted. Leaving aside the spiritual and moral effects, consider that a shrinking world will be a poorer world. The elderly are especially going to suffer, as there won't be enough younger people around to care for them, or to subsidize their care. The young will not be willing to be taxed into oblivion to pay pensions and Medicare. Think about that before you embrace euthanasia. Old people are going to be compelled to commit suicide to stop being a burden on a shrinking and ever-more impoverished society a society that, having abandoned Christianity, has no sense of life's sanctity.]
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Donald Trump, this year's presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has called collapsing fertility a bigger threat to Western civilization than Russia. A year ago Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared that the collapse of the country's birthrate left it "standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society." Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has prioritized raising the country's "demographic GDP."
Governments have rolled out programs to stop the decline-but so far they've barely made a dent.
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Fernndez-Villaverde estimates global fertility fell to between 2.1 and 2.2 last year, which he said would be below global replacement for the first time in human history. Dean Spears, a population economist at the University of Texas at Austin, said while the data isn't good enough to know precisely when or if fertility has fallen below replacement, "we have enough evidence to be quite confident about…the crossing point not being far off."
In 2017 the U.N. projected world population, then 7.6 billion, would keep climbing to 11.2 billion in 2100. By 2022 it had lowered and brought forward the peak to 10.4 billion in the 2080s. That, too, is likely out of date. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington now thinks it will peak around 9.5 billion in 2061 then start declining.
It's not a matter of not having enough money. Some rich countries, like Japan, make generous financial provision for child-raising. It's not working:
Quote:
Inoguchi, now a member of parliament's upper house, said the constraint on would-be parents is no longer money, but time. She has pressed the government and businesses to adopt a four-day workweek. She said, "If you're a government official or manager of a big corporation, you should not worry over questions of salary now, but that in 20 years time you will have no customers, no clients, no applicants to the Self-Defense Forces."
So what? you might say. There are too many people on the planet anyway. That's incredibly short-sighted. Leaving aside the spiritual and moral effects, consider that a shrinking world will be a poorer world. The elderly are especially going to suffer, as there won't be enough younger people around to care for them, or to subsidize their care. The young will not be willing to be taxed into oblivion to pay pensions and Medicare. Think about that before you embrace euthanasia. Old people are going to be compelled to commit suicide to stop being a burden on a shrinking and ever-more impoverished society a society that, having abandoned Christianity, has no sense of life's sanctity.]
