Not Enough Babies Are Being Born!

The New York Times and ABC's Nightline, two of the United States' leading mouthpieces for the "Culture of Death", have finally acknowledged what most demographers have been saying for more than a decade: The countries of Europe and North America that have embraced contraception as a way of life are demographically dead. In a perverse way, the Times and ABC stories on the vanishing West could be their way of paying tribute to Pope Paul VI's prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae, issued 30 years ago this summer. It warned that contraception would lead to a "weakening of the discipline of habits" such as having babies.

In order to understand this problem, one must go back two centuries, when Thomas Robert Malthus, an English economist, published the first edition of a pamphlet that became known as An Essay on Population. It contained the gloomy prediction that Britain's population explosion would inevitably outstrip its food supply and the country would collapse into anarchy and disease.

The pamphlet became an immense best-seller and remains a gospel for environmentalists to this day. It contains some good philosophical sense; yet on the subject of population it was plain wrong. The food supply grew faster than population through-out the next two centuries, both nationally and globally. The only problem the world has with food is its distribution.

Malthus's biggest error of all - population did not continue to expand indefinitely. Putting the final nail in the coffin of Malthusian theory, the United Nations convened a meeting in New York last week to discuss what it called a "new demographic crisis" and a "new population problem", one that already affects 51 countries and will soon spread to another 37 - countries containing two -thirds of the world population. The problem is falling numbers of people. Forget the population explosion; it is the population implosion that we must start to worry about.

In Italy the fertility rate is the lowest in the world and has now fallen to 1.1 children per woman. It is not much higher in Spain, Germany, Sweden, France, or Britain. Even in countries like Canada and America the fertility rate is now below the threshold of 2.1 children per woman necessary to keep the population stable. This means that, without immigration, the population of those countries will fall. The number of countries with such, below-replacement fertility, is growing all the time. The fear of Third World nations population out pacing the West and causing political unrest has many in the West afraid. So Third World nations are now being held hostage by economic means to reduce their populations. In order for poor nations to get the desperate loans they need from the World Bank, First World Nations tell these countries they must implement forced sterilization programs, such as in the cases of Mexico and Peru, increase promotion of contraception, and provide abortion on demand. The Third World nations birth rates are starting to fall under the economic pressure from the West.

Because of the transition, demographers have steadily reduced their estimates of world population growth since the 1960s. First they talked, like Malthus, about an indefinite exponential rise. Then they realized that the growth rate was slowing all the time, so they talked about world population leveling off at 15 billion or so in the middle of the next century. But as the world grew richer, the decline of population sharpened. Now it is widely agreed that population will never reach even 10 billion. The UN itself estimates that the top of the graph will be reached at 9.4 billion some 50 years from now. Think about that for a moment: population is not about to double again. It is already at 5-7 billion and has doubled nearly three times since Malthus's time. Yet our granaries are bulging, wheat prices are at their lowest levels ever, large tracts of agricultural land are being used for the luxury of meat production or is set aside altogether for nature. The Third World is consuming more calories per person than ever before. Disease, malnutrition, and famine are retreating almost everywhere.

The reason population continues to decline is because we are so selfish and greedy. Prosperity has strangled us! We live in the richest country in the world and everyone is worried if they can afford to take their next vacation or buy a new car. The ethic of sacrifice for a family, one of the basic ideas of human societies has become a historical notion. It is astonishing! Did your parents sit down with a spread sheet and figure out if they could afford to have two or four children? No, of course not. Did this ever happen before anywhere? No, of course not.

A birth rate of 2.1 rate is needed for replacement. Below 2.1 means that, without immigration, the population of those countries will decline! The birth rate for the United States would be far below 2.0 if it was not for the immigration and high birth rate of Hispanics.

Italy -1.1
Spain --1.2
Greece--1.3
Austria---1.4
Germany---1.5
Denmark----1.6
France---------1.7
Britain---------1.7
Ireland-----------1.8
Australia---------1.8
Canada-----------1.8
USA-----------------1.9
Brazil--------------------2.5
Mexico---------------------2.7
Philippines---------------------3.6
Egypt------------------------------3.8
Sudan----------------------------------5.4
Iran---------------------------------------5.9
Oman----------------------------------------6.0
Nigeria-----------------------------------------6.3
Yemen-----------------------------------------------7.0
Ethiopia----------------------------------------------7.1