Major Industrial Nations Unprepared for Coming Population Aging and Labour Shortage

LifeSiteNews.com ^ | January 28, 2004 | January 28, 2004

[Polycarp IV]

Major Industrial Nations Unprepared for Coming Population Aging and Labour Shortage

The long-term price of aborting, contracepting, sexual revolution culture

DAVOS, Switzerland, January 28, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new report by the World Economic Forum in partnership with Watson Wyatt Worldwide has once again confirmed the coming population crisis that is to affect industrialized nations. The International Pension Readiness Report, released in time for the January 21-25, 2004 World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, underscores the disastrous effect that falling fertility rates are having throughout most of the world. Although a world-wide phenomenon, low fertility rates and a consequent decrease in labour force growth are especially alarming among industrialized nations.

Whereas the South-East Asia and Indian labour force will continue to grow in the next 30 years, the EU will see a decline in the labour force population from 208.7 million in 2000 to 151.2 million in 2050. During the same period, meanwhile, the number of people over the age of 60 in the EU will climb from 82.1 million to 125.1 million. Japan, with one of the world's lowest fertility rates, would have to increase its immigration rate 11-fold in order to maintain its labour force population.

The pension systems of the major industrialized nations will also be undermined, as a decimated labour force population combined with increased numbers of retirees cripples the countries' ability to afford pensions. For example, active workers in Italy will be outnumbered by retirees by 2030.

As for economic productivity, the EU's share of total global output will shrink by nearly half from today's 18 percent to ten percent in 2050, whereas Japan's share would decline by half from eight percent to four percent in the same period.

Richard Samans of the World Economic Forum said that "Economic output is determined by labour force growth and productivity rates. In countries with significant projected labour shortages, the supply of goods and services may not meet demand and standards of living."

Some of the solutions proposed in the report include: increased immigration; an extension of the retirement age; encouraging more women and younger workers to enter the workplace; and the export of capital and labour to other parts of the world where there are larger labour forces.

Sadly, no suggestion is made for incentives to encourage couples to have larger families. Nor is the abortion issue mentioned. In Canada alone since 1970, enough children have been killed through abortion to populate the city of Toronto. This figure does not take into account the much larger number of chemical and intrauterine abortions induced through the birth control pill (also an abortifacient) and intrauterine devices.

Sylvester Schieber, director of research at Watson Wyatt and co-author of the report, said that "[These] demographic changes present enormous challenges for developed countries."

See the detailed, full Watson Wyatt report at http://www.watsonwyatt.com/news/featured/wef/

Read the related LifeSiteNews.com coverage of one incentive for an increased birth rate in Italy at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/dec/03120307.html

Also read the related LifeSiteNews.com newsbyte which reveals that the number of people age 65 and older in the world has more than tripled over the past half-century at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2001/dec/011217.html

[Salvation]

The results of the secular society's vision of death for babies, death for older people, culture of death, period!

[Salvation]

**Are we below replacement birthrate?**

I think so. Baby boomers are starting to die. And families are only having 2.5 children. There is no way that ratio can continue without exhausting our own workforce.

[FITZ]

However, Bush knows that a contracting population base equals economic stagnation and recession. He doesn't want that.

I guess he doesn't because he's sending as many jobs to the one-child Chinese who now have the worlds' fastest growing economy. The Chinese are actually doing quite a lot better than the Mexicans who are breeding faster than anyone. If just having a fast growing population was the factor, Mexico shouldn't be the disaster it is. It's fastest growing cities are skyrocketing in crime, they're being murdered almost faster than they can reproduce. I don't know but I would imagine Chinese cities have far less crime and better conditions.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Some of the solutions proposed in the report include: increased immigration; an extension of the retirement age; encouraging more women and younger workers to enter the workplace; and the export of capital and labour to other parts of the world where there are larger labour forces.

Aging population causes problem. Immigration solves the problem?

"Kofi Annan calls for UN migration agency," By Peter Deselaers Inter Press Service, November, 2003

Annan's case was strongly backed by Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia University. Professor Bhagwati first propsed a World Migration Organization (WMO), similar to the World Trade Organization (WTO)or World Health Organization (WHO) about twelve years ago.

It would allow source countries to maintain its citizens loyality and tax their incomes while they work in the host country. Professor Bhagwati discusses his plan in "Borders Beyond Control" (http://bss.sfsu.edu/jmoss/resources/635_pdf/No_35_bhagwati.pdf)

Though Annan does not expect to create a UN migration agency during his term (which ends 2006) eventually "Nation states need to embrace multi-culturalism and deal with their fears about giving up homogeneity and narrow definitions about what constitutes a nationality."

The way I read this World Migration Organization movement we cannot expect "migrants" to help pay our bills.

[FITZ]

Thus his mexigrant plan.

I'm for large families --- the larger the better, but only those people who can feed and clothe their own children and properly educate their children. That usually means solid families which isn't where the extreme population growth is in Mexico --- there the educated middle class tends to have smaller families. The poor are just bringing child after child into poverty, abandoning many to the streets to fend for themselves at very young ages.

[IndyMac]

In reply to: "Americans are at a birth rate below replacement rate":

I'm not sure where you got your numbers, but they are not correct. The US is the only industrialized nation with a birth rate that is above the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple (although not by much). We were well below 2.0 for awhile in the 70's, but it has increased over the past two decades.

What is surprising is that much of the third world is rapidly approaching their replacment rate, and the trends indicate that world population may peak fairly soon and decline at an accelerating rate with unpredictable consequences (what happens land values when nobody is around to buy it?).

Regarding your comment about Mexicans: they are drawn to our jobs. I don't think they know or care what the birth rate is in the US and we should be happy they are here (as long as they're here legally and hold a job). The majority are hard workers and only looking for a better life, just like our ancestors, right? By the way, did you know that the fertility rate in Mexico is already at or below their replacment rate and falling, not rising? Mexico's population is still climbing fairly rapidly because of 'inertia' as women remain in their child bearing years for several decades, but this is a temporary situation unless their ferility rate increases soon. Ditto for much of the third world.

All of this may be good for the US as these immigrants will pay into the Social Security system, pension funds, etc., to support YOUR retirement, no?? Read Ben Wattenberg when you get a chance.

[FITZ]

By the way, did you know that the fertility rate in Mexico is already at or below their replacment rate and falling, not rising?

Sending a million over to the USA a year might behind that --- plus many of their street children have very short lives and gang violence and drug overdose is killing their teens and young adults.

[.cnI redruM]

I'd plant my seed for some good old fashioned green.

[PresbyRev]

Hey - hey. Include us Protestant homeschooing, postmillennial types! Routinely you find families of 4,6,8 or more being schooled in traditional values and an optimistic, comprehensive Christian worldview.

Happily, my wife and I are expecting our third child in May.

I agree with you 100% about who wins! The culture of death itself will die out; it is self-marginalizing.

More power to our Catholic brothers and sisters, we are all in it together.

[Luis Gonzalez]

I've been getting my butt kicked in this forum for a very long time trying to educate people on this. The U.S. not only has to deal with the declining birth rates, but to boot, we kill a million fetuses yearly.

Then, to make matter worse, the baby boomers are retiring in droves, and picking up speed, so the population is graying rapidly, while we simultaneously extend life expectancy.

To maintain Social Security viable, there needs to be a workers to retiree ratio that we are not achieving, thus the increases in immigration, both legal and illegal.

Government estimates project that by the year 2050, we could allow the entire working age population of Mexico into the U.S., and it would not be enough to maintain today's worker to retiree ratio.

The one glimmer of light in the whole thing, is that Europe has Muslims to repopulate itself with, we have Central and South American Hispanics...the only place in the world where Muslims decreased in number in the past decade.

[Polycarp IV]

I'm not sure where you got your numbers, but they are not correct. The US is the only industrialized nation with a birth rate that is above the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple (although not by much).

I got my numbers from the 2001 article I posted in post #11. My reading on this subject has consistently shown that, if it weren't for current immigration levels, both legal and illegal, we would have a declining population base. In other words, Americans themselves are below replacement rates, but Americans PLUS immigrants puts us at slightly above replacement rates:

In Europe as a whole, the total fertility rate is about 1.4. ...In the USA it is still fractionally above replacement, helped by the relatively high fertility of Mexican-Americans and a large immigration programme.

*****

Regarding your comment about Mexicans: they are drawn to our jobs. I don't think they know or care what the birth rate is in the US and we should be happy they are here (as long as they're here legally and hold a job).

Its the low birth rate that creates the labor vaccuum, making the jobs they are filling here available.

I think we're on the same page here, IndyMac.

[Polycarp IV]

Few folks, even here, fully grasp the enormity of the coming population implosion.

Our contraceptive and abortive culture is responsible, and most here contracept.

Thus you won't find many Americans willing to face up to these issues.

Us Catholics just sit back and smirk.

[Cronos]

Bush's immigration plan seems to be the American response to this bitter reality. Think all the angry FReepers here seething against illegal immigrants will ever put two and two together and realize its their own contracepting and aborting culture which has caused that which they detest?

Quite correct, W is trying to clean up the problem caused since the 60s. Plus, I'd rather have a devout, Christianpeople like Mexicans coming in here than slmmmmmmmmies.

[Cronos]

Japan is slowly asphixiating itself. it's above 60 population is more htan 10% and rising. It's population is supposed to Half by 2050 (along with Russia). It won't accept immigration. Japan and Russia will be consigned to the past in another 50 years while China would move into Siberia, probably taking over much of what is now Asian Russia.

[BMiles2112]

Our contraceptive and abortive culture is responsible, and most here contracept.
In addition, (or one in the same), it seems to be a combination of greed and short-sightedness. I know of no one around my age, (25), who plans on having more than two kids. The primary reason being that they believe it takes two incomes to raise any children, so having any more than a couple is impossible. This of course is nonsense.

BTW, keep up the good work. I rarely have time anymore to post to FR, but I'm at least kept up to date on these issues due to your "conservative Catholic" pings.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Think all the angry FReepers here seething against illegal immigrants will ever put two and two together and realize its their own contraceptive and aborting culture which has caused that which they detest?"

Generally speaking, we, as a people, are not real good about accepting personal responsibility for our own actions, and we play word games to avoid facing those responsibilities.

The concept of "choice" versus "life" in the abortion issue is a perfect example...the people defending "choice" in the abortion issue, have self-imposed blinders, they will not admit that the "choice" was made at the moment that they engaged in an activity which normally leads to pregnancy, and what they call "choice", is the right to murder the result of their "choice" to conceive carelessly. In other words, they defend their right not to live by their choices, and to murder others to avoid any possibility of it.

In a moral country, populated with people who face up to the consequences of their choices in a responsible manner, there would be no need for legislation addressing the issue of abortion, because truly moral people would never entertain the idea of murdering a fetus.

Then, we moan and groan about the actions of the politicians in D.C., without once bothering to acknowledge that we sent them there, and I mean "we" as a people.

If we have a leftist-leaning government, it's because we sent an inordinate number of politicians with leftist ideals to D.C.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Our contraceptive and abortive culture is responsible, and most here contracept."

I'd rather have people using contraception, than demanding abortion "rights".

[Polycarp IV]

I'd rather have people using contraception, than demanding abortion "rights".

If folks contracept, they will abort.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the US Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade [U.S. decision to permit abortions] stated “in some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail”.

[Polycarp IV]

The Supreme Court decision has made completely unnecessary, any efforts to “expose” what is really behind the attachment of the modern age to abortion. As the Supreme Court candidly states, we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles. It is not because contraceptives are ineffective that a million and a half women a year seek abortions as back-ups to failed contraceptives. The “intimate relationships” facilitated by contraceptives are what make abortions “necessary”. “Intimate” here is a euphemism and a misleading one at that. Here the word “intimate” means “sexual”; it does not mean “loving and close”. Abortion is most often the result of sexual relationships in which there is no room for a baby, the natural consequence of sexual intercourse.

To support the argument that more responsible use of contraceptives would reduce the number of abortions, some note that most abortions are performed for “contraceptive purposes”. That is, few abortions are had because a woman has been a victim of rape or incest or because a pregnancy would endanger her life, or because she expects to have a handicapped or deformed newborn. Rather, most abortions are had because men and women who do not want a baby are having sexual intercourse and facing pregnancies they did not plan for and do not want. Because their contraceptive failed, or because they failed to use a contraceptive, they then resort to abortion as a back up. Many believe that if we could convince men and women to use contraceptives responsibly, we would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and thus the number of abortions. Thirty years ago this position might have had some plausibility, but not now. We have lived for about thirty years with a culture permeated with contraceptive use and abortion; no longer can we think that greater access to contraception will reduce the number of abortions. Rather, wherever contraception is more readily available, the number of unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions increase greatly.

[Luis Gonzalez]

We have reached an impasse here.

You say that if folks use contraceptives, they will abort, and I say that if folks have sex without contraception, there will be unwanted pregnancies, which lead to the desire to abort.

I am a realist, and I don't see any way that you will ever convince people to quit having sex unless they're prepared to shoulder the responsibility.

While you claim that the use of contraception creates abortions, I will continue to argue that unprotected sex causes pregnancies, in which case, I see using contraceptives as a better alternative.