The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten
World Prosperity and What to Do About It
by Phillip Longman
(Basic Books, 288 pages, $26)
A quick search for the term “population decline” in an articles
database turns up 248 English-language results for the past two
months. Of those entries, the majority are about the wild Atlantic
salmon, migrating shorebirds, the California amphibian population,
the eastern lowland gorilla and the northern spotted owl. Only
about a dozen of the articles mention shrinking human birthrates
worldwide and the ultimate result of that decline that many
demographers are now predicting: a diminishing human population
before the end of this century.
Absent plagues, famines or massive wars, for the first time in
history human population is expected to begin contracting. The
general consensus among demographers now is that the numbers will
peak at about 9 billion people in 2070. And then they will begin to
fall.
In much of the developed world we are seeing the foreshadowing
of that ultimate decline. Russia is already losing population, and
only immigration is keeping Italy from following suit. Japan is
expected to begin its downward slide next year, and over the next
50 years to lose as much as one-third of its population — a drop
equivalent, the Japanese demographer Hideo Ibe has noted, to the
one caused by the plague in medieval Europe. And Britain is among
those countries primed for a decline next. Europe as a whole is
expected to lose 4 percent of its population by 2025, and the
United States may not be far behind. Most surprising of all, many
demographers are predicting that even the developing world, with
places like Mexico and Bangladesh long the home of teeming masses,
is likely to begin shrinking soon after the West does.
In his new book, The Empty Cradle, Phillip Longman
argues that shrinking birthrates will affect both domestic politics
and U.S. power and influence in the world. He also takes a look
back at the conventional wisdom of the past few decades that a
human “population bomb” was ticking and would be a weapon of mass
destruction set off against all life on earth.
During the 1970s, doomsday scientists were predicting mass
famine, natural resource shortages, and various environmental
catastrophes as the result of what they saw as human
overpopulation. Ecologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The
Population Bomb, predicted that by the year 2000 Japan would
run out of food and mobs of starving Chinese would overrun Russia.
Of course, by 1990 the discredited Ehrlich had tweaked his thesis
slightly, saying that, “Actually, the problem in the world is that
there are much too many rich people…”
And as Longman shows in The Empty Cradle, the
prescriptions of people like Ehrlich for reducing fertility over
the past few decades have poised the world to collect massive
negative dividends. For one example, Longman cites a London School
of Economics study of entrepreneurialism worldwide. According to
the economists, there exists an almost perfect correlation between
countries that have large numbers of retirees to their work base
and low rates of entrepreneurship. Japan and France are currently
among the least entrepreneurial countries in the world, the study
finds — and simultaneously the grayest.
BUT FIRST, IT IS USEFUL to take a look at how we got here.
Population growth was slow for most of human history because,
although families were considerably larger before the forces of
modernization took hold, there was a significant death toll from
disease and starvation. When food shortages, disease and unsanitary
conditions were diminished, population began to soar. The Danish
scientist Bjorn Lomberg in his 2001 book The Skeptical
Environmentalist, noted that human numbers grew quickly with
modernization “not because people started breeding like rabbits,
but because they stopped dying like flies.”
United Nations forecasts show that by 2070 world population
growth is likely to peak. And then, demographers believe, there
will be a decline, perhaps even a rapid one. And many are certain
that this contraction, not overpopulation, is the real population
crisis facing man. Human beings have been living with an expanding
population throughout their time on earth. A permanently
contracting population is part of a brave new world no one has ever
seen.
Although many factors have led us to this stage, Longman notes
that a complex economic dynamic is the prime factor in lowering
fertility rates. In all countries, as people move to urban areas in
which children offer no economic reward to the family, and as women
acquire access to education, economic opportunities and
contraception, the opportunity costs of childbearing continue to
rise.
Indeed the absolute costs of raising children in Western
countries have grown astronomically as well. For example, Longman
notes that in the United States, the cost of raising a middle-class
child born this year through age 18, according to the Department of
Agriculture, exceeds $200,000 — not factoring in the cost of
higher education. And the cost in forgone wages, even for those
families in the middle of the middle class, can easily run in
excess of $1 million.
Longman shows that these costs stem from the tendency of
economic development toward a more education-intensive economy.
Nowadays children often remain economically dependent on their
parents well into their own childbearing years because it takes
longer to develop a worker — such development includes not only
skills, credentials and education, but also the social
understanding and personal maturity necessary for success in a
complex, networked economy. Therefore by the time many couples can
afford children, they must settle for fewer than they otherwise
would have had.
AND THEN THE AGING begins. The initial difficulties are obvious
ones. Once a society begins turning out more retirees than workers,
there is a severe strain on both private and public pension funds.
In Germany, for example, public spending on pensions is expected to
increase from an already overwhelming 10.3 percent of GDP to 15.4
percent by 2040.
Some have touted the “longevity revolution” as one of the
answers to the modern population dilemma, with workers expected to
live longer, healthier and therefore more productive lives. But
Longman notes that, due to lifestyle factors, life expectancy among
aging Americans is actually decreasing in many categories. We may
be at or near the end of the line on the longevity revolution, as
diseases related to Western lifestyle — such as cancers and heart
attacks induced by smoking and obesity — seem at this point likely
to all but wipe out any future gains made by modern medicine. And
as Western lifestyles spread throughout the developing world, we
can expect more of the same on a global scale.
Many argue that immigration is the cure to population ills and
that, by allowing immigrants from poorer regions of the world
access to the opportunities of the West, everyone’s problems could
be solved. Throughout much of American history, immigrants have
indeed renewed the nation with their vitality. However, with
population contractions on the horizon for developing countries
like Mexico, and because the United States is already competing
with Europe for immigrants from other parts of the world such as
north Africa, this seems at best a tenuous solution to the problem
close at hand.
According to Longman, some biologists now speculate that human
beings have engineered a self-destructive environment in which the
“fittest” members of the species have an incentive to produce few
or no children. He notes one primary exception to this rule —
studies have found that there is a strong correlation between
religious conviction and fertility. In the United States, 47
percent of people who consider themselves religious say that the
ideal family size is three or more children, as compared to only 27
percent of those who are not religious.
But secular societies have also recognized the dangers of the
decline and are attempting to head it off. Last month in Australia
— which currently averages a record low for that country of 1.75
births per woman — various officials urged couples to begin having
larger families. Head of the national treasury Peter Costello
dangled a $3,000 maternity bonus in front of potential parents and
told them, “You should have one for the father, one for the mother
and one for the country.” He added for good measure, “Go home
tonight and do it for your country.”
Longman recommends that secular societies come up with better
ways of educating young adults and integrating them into the work
force, thereby reducing tensions between work and procreation. He
advocates education as a lifetime pursuit, more opportunities for
part-time employment, and full health and pension benefits for such
work.
He also makes the bold recommendation that governments offer a
reprieve to parents on paying into social security systems. He
argues that, in raising children, parents already contribute to
these systems in the form of human capital.
All these suggestions are worthy of consideration from policy
makers. But ultimately, only a culture that values families and
encourages childbearing, and only individuals who believe these are
not only worthwhile but essential pursuits, can correct the
demographic decline we are about to enter.
