This almost universal concern is warranted because a people is like a species: a failure to reproduce leads to extinction.
Now, this doesn’t mean that neutron bomb-like cityscapes lie in the West’s future. More likely is that its peoples will be dominated — and supplanted — by other cultures. Oh, its new master may not be Islam; it may be China, India or, even more likely, different groups in different parts of the West. The point is that while the Third World and Asia are following in our footsteps, they are far healthier demographically and may be able to recover. But we may soon be at the point of no return.
Long ago the cradle of Western civilization and more recently one of its backwaters, it’s now part of a phalanx of Western demographic failures. In fact, while it may seem counterintuitive to those weaned on the stuff of Malthusian nightmares, the West is facing a population implosion of historic proportions. And the statistics are staggering. As I wrote when reviewing the documentary Demographic Winter last year:
. . . the number of children in the world is already declining . . . . Birthrates are now below replacement level . . . in approximately 70 countries; in Western Europe, the figure is 1.38, and in northern Italy and parts of Spain it is below 1. As a result, Europe’s 65-year-olds now outnumber her 14-year-olds, and one German province had to close 220 schools in 2006. Children were present in 80 percent of U.S. households a century ago; that number is now 32 percent.
Although pondering demographic malaise conjures up the image of sterile Western swingers, note that this phenomenon is, in a measure, manifesting itself worldwide. Take Eastern Europe, for example. Russia, with its birthrate of 1.4 children per woman, is experiencing a population decrease of 700,000 a year. With an even lower birthrate of 1.22, some Lithuanian officials are concerned about the eventual disappearance of their population. And this is mirrored in other Eastern European nations; Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and the rest are all turning in similar numbers.
The picture is no better in developed Asian nations. Although they’re still stuffing people into Tokyo subway cars like sardines, Japan’s rapidly graying population contracts with a birthrate of 1.22. South Koreans may have far more reason to bring children into the world than Kim Jong-il’s captives, but their 1.2 still can’t match the latter’s 2.0. And Hong Kong, not to be outdone — but perhaps soon undone — comes in second to last in the world with a birthrate of 1 even (only Macau ranks lower).
Even more surprisingly, the developing world is now following our lead. For example, Uruguay, Kazakhstan and Algeria have birthrates of, respectively, 1.94, 1.88 and 1.82. And while millions of illegal aliens still stream across our sieve-like southern border, believe it or not, even Mexico’s birthrate is plummeting muy rapido. As professional demographers have been telling us since the 1970s, the whole world is poised to experience a demographic winter…….
For example, the ancient Romans at one point became obsessed with the idea that they weren’t creating enough babies; Joseph Stalin, hardly a pro-lifer, outlawed abortion; and the Nazis had their Lebensborn program. And even today governments are taking note of the problem. To name a handful, Russia, Poland, France and an Italian town are offering citizens substantial monetary incentives (i.e., cash and sometimes tax breaks) to be fruitful and multiply. Yet it isn’t working — and for good reason: a cultural problem cannot be solved with a political solution. Why, even demographically correct Augustus Caesar, who wielded absolute power, could not remedy the birth dearth among Roman nobility.
Now the question is, does this matter? If you listen to the left, our demographic demise is something to be ignored when possible and applauded when not. As Kathryn Joyce did in an incredibly snide and stupid article titled “Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies,” the concern about the West’s baby bust is often chalked up to just “old-fashioned race panic.” The left’s implication is that cultural suicide is our civilization’s comeuppance.