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Capitol Ideas
Population, Economy, and God
Western fertility decline is now deplored even by an inventor of the Pill.
(Page 2 of 2)
THE U.S. HAS BEEN SEEN AS the great stumbling block to any theory linking prosperity, lack of faith, and low fertility. Prosperity here has been high, and overall fertility is at replacement. But I am wary of this version of American exceptionalism. How much lower would U.S. fertility fall without the influx of Latino immigrants and their many offspring? Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at AEI, tells me that Mexican immigrants now actually have a higher fertility rate in the U.S. than they do in Mexico. (Maybe because they come to American hospitals for free medical care?)
I wonder also if religious vitality here is what it’s cracked up to be. Surely it has weakened considerably. A recent survey by Trinity College in Hartford, funded by the Lilly Endowment, showed that the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christian dropped to 76 percent from 86 percent in 1990; those with “no” religion, 8.2 percent of the population in 1990, are now 15 percent.
As a social force, the U.S. Catholic bishops have withered away to a shocking extent. Hollywood once respected and feared their opinion. Today, the most highly placed of these bishops are unwilling to publicly rebuke pro-abortion politicians who call themselves Catholic, even when they give scandal by receiving Communion in public. How the mitered have fallen. They daren’t challenge the rich and powerful.
But there is another factor. Calling yourself a Christian when the pollster phones imposes no cost and self-reported piety may well be inflated. We have to distinguish between mere self-labelers and actual churchgoers. And beyond that there are groups with intense religious belief who retain the morale to ignore the surrounding materialism and keep on having children.
The ultra-Orthodox in Israel are the best example. Other Jewish congregations may go to synagogue, but they have children at perhaps one-third the ultra- Orthodox rate. At about seven or eight children per family, theirs is one of the highest fertility rates in the world. And they don’t permit birth control— Carl Djerassi, please note. In the U.S. Orthodox Jews again far outbreed their more secular sisters.
The Mormons are also distinctive. Utah, about two-thirds Mormon, has the highest fertility rate (2.63 in 2006) among the 50 states; Vermont has the lowest (1.69). In the recent Trinity Survey, Northern New England is now “the least religious section of the country.” Vermont is the least religious state; 34 percent of residents say they have “no religion.” So minimal faith and low fertility are demonstrably linked. Mormon fertility is declining, to be sure, and I recognize that I am flirting with a circular argument: deciding which groups are the most fervent by looking at their birth rates.
Then there’s the Muslim concern. It’s hard to avoid concluding that the lost Christian zeal has been appropriated by Islam. In the U.S., Muslims have doubled since 1990 (from a low base, to 0.6% of the population). The rise of Islam suggests that the meager European fertility rates would be even lower if Muslims had not contributed disproportionately to European childbearing.
It’s hard to pin down the numbers, though. Fertility in France has risen, but Nick Eberstadt tells me that the French government won’t reveal how many of these babies are born to Muslim parents. “They treat it as a state secret,” he said. In other countries such as Switzerland, where lots of guest workers are employed, the fertility rate would be much lower than it already is (1.44) were it not for the numerous offspring of those guest workers. When a population is not replacing itself, the welfare state creates its own hazard. Lots of new workers are needed to support the retirees. Germany’s low fertility will require an annual immigration of 200,000 just to maintain the current population. Where will they come from? Many arrive from Turkey, where the fertility rate has also declined ( to a bout 2 .0). But not as far as it has declined among native Germans. So the concern is that in the welfare states of Europe, believing Muslims are slowly replacing the low-morale, low-fertility, materialistic non-believers who once formed a Christian majority.
I could summarize the argument with this overstatement: The intelligentsia stopped believing in God in the 19th century. In the 20th it tried to build a new society, man without God. It failed. Then came a new twist. Man stopped believing in himself. He saw himself as a mere polluter—a blot on the landscape. Theologians tell us that creatures cannot exist without the support of God. A corollary may be that societies cannot long endure without being sustained by a belief in God.
About the Author
Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).
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Deborah D| 5.12.09 @ 7:19AM
And thus, DM proves Mr. Bethel's many excellent points.
God save us from stupid enviro-wacko-liberals, who think they're smarter than God.
Appleby| 5.12.09 @ 7:43AM
Here in Toronto the average condo is 400 square feet and costs $300,000. Where are people supposed to stack their kids? If you are living, as the Watermelon Greenies (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) demand, in a cubicle on the 61st floor of a high rise with a view of nothing but other high-rises, and walking or bicycling to work in another high-rise, where do your kids play and how do you look after them? And if you are paying $2,000 a month for that cubicle, including huge taxes levied so the Mayor can frivol the money away on Street Furniture and enormous downtown parties, and trying to close down the Island Airport which is the only thing in town that actually makes money, how do you afford private school -- because lockdowns due to knifings and shootings are pretty regular in the public schools, and our schools are consistently the lowest rated schools in the country?
Where is the incentive, even if you do get a year off with pay as a reward for getting pregnant?
I am looking forward to seeing socialism collapse though, when there are not enough wage slaves to fund this ponzi scheme. It will be happening soon.
PolishKnight| 5.12.09 @ 10:50AM
The author mentioned many things and touched on the issue, ("the status of women"), but if he turned it around the answer would be clear: The status of men, and especially MARRIED WORKING men, has been undermined and even attacked for the past 40 years. Only a few conservatives such as Schlafly have observed that when colleges brag about women's enrollment rates of 60%+ that it will be difficult for these women to marry and have children when they seek to marry up at a later time. Policies that punish married men for supporting a family such as alimony and one-side-takes-all custody policies in the event of a divorce scares away young men. Divorce lawyers are now legally obligated to advise women that false allegations of abuse are indispensible as divorce and custody tools.
Reap (or in this case, don't reap) what you sow.
JRS240| 5.12.09 @ 11:05AM
Tom Bethell's closing paragragh sums it up: Western Civilization is untethering itself from a faith in God. Rejecting God, and seeing no good come from it, Men are gradually rejecting themselves.
The end result will be pure nihilism.
Piper1| 5.12.09 @ 12:32PM
Another interesting thing about Vermont: it has to be the state with the largest percentage population of open homosexuals in the country.
My wife and I visited Manchester, Vermont a few years ago and were shocked at how many men we saw walking the streets holding hands. We were even more shocked a year later when our hostess informed us that her husband had left her for a man.
I have no doubt that this fact weighs heavily in the Vermont courts' notorious laxity when it comes to child predators. (Bill O'Reilly has been raising the roof about this for years.)
Not sure whether a lack of children and religious belief leads to a large gay population or the other way around, but they sure all do seem to go together.
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Check this one out:
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Charles Martel| 5.12.09 @ 3:51PM
I keep getting to these comment sections too late to see the latest inanity from the house leftist.
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Pat| 5.12.09 @ 3:59PM
Like a herd of cows sharing a "mood", the American public dimly senses that things aren't looking good for the future. It wasn't supposed to be that way - technical progress means our lives simply become better and better - nothing can stop that from happening - right?
With 70 million Boomers on the doorstep of senior citizenhood, the economic signs aren't encouraging and the root problem keeps coming back to good old demographics. Plan to ciphon off some home equity for those retirement dreams? Guess again. Home prices will continue dropping, the young couples that need homes for their growing families aren't there - who will buy those 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath palaces at exorbitant prices when the older homeowners think about downsizing? That mythical demand won't materialize and home prices will maintain their downward spiral.
And don't even talk about Social Security and Medicare - you don't want to go there. With a sharp increase in taxpayer supported medical costs in the year before death, Europe is leading the way with state sanctioned euthanasia of the old and helpless - and America eventually follows Europe in social progress innovations.
Forming old folks' political coalitions to lay some heavy payroll taxes on the young is the plan to fund future social security shortfalls, but will it work? More than likely not; the old geezers can vote themselves increases in state welfare but the young aren't likely to sacrifice their working lives for their seniors. More probably, the working age before retirement will continue to increase with the government finding jobs that 75 to 80 year old seniors, with reduced stamina and attention span, can handle.
Looks like the "technology makes for progress" joke is on us after all. Life isn't really better through chemistry.
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Matteo| 5.12.09 @ 11:31PM
"Large families are no longer needed to support older parents."
I think that perhaps we are slowly starting to find out that this was an incorrect assumption.
Vaemar| 5.13.09 @ 5:10AM
There is an easy solution to this if only there is the political will to implement it: give large families better tax-breaks!
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ccc| 5.13.09 @ 5:27PM
There is insufficient evidence that any problems will occur from falling populations. Human populations are well known to go through periods of increase and decrease it is all completely natural and there is nothing that people could do about even if it were a man made problem.
Alan Brooks| 5.13.09 @ 7:27PM
VT. is more conservative than you think, if you live in northern VT, say the Northeast Kingdom, it is extremely conservative.
PNMNM| 5.13.09 @ 7:51PM
The pill has been the modern answer to the initial commandment, to be fruitful and multiply. With its acceptance, sterile sex has become the norm. It is no wonder that homosexual activity and other sexual perversions have become rampant, and abortion is no longer taboo. The pill has also abrogated the natural relationship between men and women so that courtship is far more difficult today. One could go on and on about what the pill has done to human society. The irony of all of this is that the seculars are not replacing themselves. If survival of the fittest is operative for a species, those holding the me-first position are not reproducing. Those people who truly subscribe to the will of the Creator are the ones having the most children. Truly, the meek will inherit the earth.
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