The facts outlined above remain: most European nations are not reproducing themselves.
Pat Buchanan wrote an excellent book on this a decade ago: 
. (Funny, he includes Japan in his category of "the West".)
Posted on 08/21/2010 7:02:54 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Europe is dying. The Washington Post, among others, reports that, within a hundred years, there will be the rare German in Germany or Italian in Italy. Some demographers believe it is too late to correct Europe's plunge into extinction. "The fall in the population can no longer be stopped," reported Walter Rademacher of the German Federal Statistics Office.
Replacement fertility rates are 2.1 children per woman in developed nations. No nation in Europe can claim that rate, and most fall under 1.6. At those levels, each generation is barely half the number of the preceding one. The working-age population is reduced by 30 percent in just 20 years, having a devastating impact on economies. Today, European Union and United Nations experts are sufficiently alarmed to call councils to address the population crisis. The irony is that this is a crisis of their making.
In the 1960s, futurists painted a dire picture of population explosion and its concomitant depletion of resources. As recently as ten years ago, the UN's own Millennium Summit Declaration insisted, "We must spare no effort to free all of humanity, and above all our children and grandchildren from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs" (22).
Global policy planners set about crafting a means to curb world fertility. Contraception and abortion as social policy necessarily pitted planners against Christian teaching and traditional families. Predictably, these policies led to tacit devaluation of marriage and the acceptance of divorce, cohabitation, and single parenthood in the developed nations. Worse, a militant secularization of Western culture deprived two generations of the foundational reasons for family formation. Sociological tinkering as part of the Human Potential Movement sought to detach people from "religious superstitions" and apply scientific methods to the management of human beings. Their mistake was a crucial misunderstanding of the nature of family: Is there an inherent, ontological basis for families, or can the nature of a "family" be recast at the whim of international governing bodies?
In March, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) released the "Policy Brief on Ageing #5," which stated, "Populations in the UNECE region are ageing rapidly. To maintain economic growth and standard of living, people would need to work longer before they can retire." Left unsaid is the root cause: "Because we have aborted or contracepted a large percentage of our future generation, the current aging generation can expect less support in old age from the children they did not have who cannot now contribute to the GDP, thereby threatening our standard of living."
Yet another effort to address the European crisis is the cheery sounding formal paper "The Happiness Commonality: Fertility decisions in a low fertility setting." The paper gushes with false hope and a bald assertion that children are a valuable consumer commodity:
The main idea of this article is that the quest for happiness, and the compatibility between happiness and childbearing, is the "commonality" that may bring an understanding of fertility differences in contemporary advanced societies in Europe and North America. . . . In this framework, the decision to marry, to divorce or to have a (nother) child is taken when we expect to be in a better position (in other words, happier) when comparing the status after this decision (to have a child) has been taken with the current status. If children are considered as "consumption goods", we have children because we derive utility from having them. Despite semi-hysterical attempts to reassure the remaining European population that having children could lead to greater happiness, there are very powerful social and political forces that cannot be turned around quickly enough.
First is the addiction to the oft-stated "standard of living." Child credits or family-friendly economic policies are insufficient -- around 4 percent of GDP in the best case, Denmark. Tax or direct credits are less in other nations, and in any case the incentives have not proven effective: It has become a strong cultural norm to have fewer children, and monetary assistance is simply not enticing. Italy's "Bambini bonus" did not result in a measureable uptick in birth rates. Simply stated, even where the nation is willing to make the social and economic investment in the next generation, its individual citizens often are not. Why is this?
Economic analysis reveals that a disproportionate percentage of the retired population leans on its ever-fewer young citizens. Their tax burden is too great (spread over too few taxpayers), couples end up postponing or foregoing children altogether, and the depopulation spiral gains speed. Further analysis shows that a woman who interrupts her productive working years for an aggregate of ten years in order to raise a family loses 20 percent to 25 percent of her lifetime earnings. Government birth credit policies are no match for this monetary and professional loss.
Additionally, quality commercial care for young children can cost 10,000 Euros per year. Southern Europeans are faced with the choice to sacrifice children to career or career to children. (In the Nordic nations, government subsidy is far higher and is partially borne through a compulsory daycare attendance from 13 months.)
Studies show that American men are more likely to assist their wives with domestic tasks; European men, meanwhile, especially in Mediterranean countries, are less likely to tackle child care and domestic chores. For dual-income couples in Europe, one predictor of a second birth is the degree to which the father has assisted with the first child. Added responsibilities, such as care for elderly parents, means a second child is a rarity.
Conversely, for Europe's intentionally childless couples, freed of child-care obligations, the standard of living can be quite high. And, as they age, they will draw on the productivity of younger citizens, though they produced none themselves -- a free ride of sorts.
In the final calculation, couples, especially women, feel no obligation to contribute to the nation's demographic health. Her free choice and personal fulfillment are devoid of concern that her nation's future is in peril because, quite simply, she will not be around to endure the consequences. An egotistic, nihilistic message underpins this lifestyle: "This is all there is. Get what you can, because soon it will be over." Commitment beyond my immediate need is of no consequence to me. Even the very concept of national community is reduced to an exchange between citizens and their state where tax revenue is pooled; and education, health care, and infrastructure maintenance are consumed by citizens in the pool.
As secularization systematically erases all reference to cultural tradition, religion, and transcendence, it removes the anchoring identity of the people. What does "nation" mean to postmodern men raised in a history-erasing state school? High-worth citizens (educated and possessing specialized skill sets) may shop for the "nation" that offers the best exchange of services for joining its tax pool.
Secularized elite Westerners who imagine they will have the luxury to exchange skills for a life lived within the political arrangement of their choice have gravely miscalculated. The United Nations Security Council's permanent seats are on course to be dominated by Muslim-controlled nations. The European seats of Britain and France, as well as Russia's seat, are already compromised: As their percentage of immigrant Muslim citizens rise, they dare not risk a Security Council vote against another Muslim state, lest their own citizens riot. If Islam ascendant inherits the reins of the EU, toleration of postmodern lifestyles will not be its distinguishing feature.
In Habermaus's term, "post-metaphysical" secular Europe intentionally and legally eliminated Christianity as a recognized foundation of European culture -- all in the name of freedom. When the European Union drew up its new constitution, Pope John Paul II and then-Cardinal Ratzinger futilely urged leaders to acknowledge the Christian contribution to the making of Europe (see "The Dark Side of the European Union," from the June 2003 issue of crisis). The Christian worldview is the genesis of the very idea of human rights, yet this foundation was casually swept aside. Many reasoned voices echoed Hillaire Belloc, warning that a people without the intimate knowledge of their common origins cannot perdure as a cohesive society.
Secularists realize, but do not publicly admit, that that loss of Christian moral foundations has plunged Europe into a depopulating death spiral. What secular moderns omitted from their war-gaming gambit for population control was that the huge physical and spiritual vacuum of a post-Christian, depopulated Europe would leave them prostrate before an intolerant Islam. In the halls of international institutions where "global governance" has been methodically planned for more than 50 years, the assumption has been that those who lived to see this dream come true would be other "post-metaphysical" elite. Instead, the global system they planned may be delivered by population default to the nations of Islam, China, and India.
It is a matter of deciding priorities...and unfortunately most choose “stuff” over children.
God bless
Now that you mention it, we weren't exactly swamped with attractive, 20-something female companionship, either. The locals were mostly in their 40's or older, it seemed.
And Europeans were not low intelligent tribal people at some point in their history...they were always highly educated and intelligent...interesting
Very well said, Mrs. Don-o.
The problem is the typical 1.2 -1.6 white European fertility rates, when the society's median age edges up past menopause. Historically, no known society has every recovered from that. The number of those not in the workforce based on age or disability inexorably outnumbers new workers coming into the worksforce, which puts increasingly big costs onto the potentially childbearing generation. They bear the burden of provide the upkeep for their elders, and thus they keep delaying and deferring their own childbearing.
The new factors here, are the universal distribution of the means to effectively stop childbirths (contraception, sterilizxationa nd abortion) coupled with a much longer life expectancy (~80) prouducing a huge elderly class plus a childless young adult cohort simultaneously.
This did not happen during the Black Death. This did not happen during the Mongol Invasions. A few years ago Italy became the first nation in history where there are more people over the age of 60 than there are under the age of 20. Germany, Greece and Spain as well as Japan and other Asian Rim nations, have now crossed that same divide.
Don't forget that the potential for childbearing is pretty much limited to about ages 15-35 years old for the females in each age cohort. Fertility declines drastically after that. If you have a situation where the females basically aren't coming anywhere near replacing themselves (think Bologna, Italy, where the fertility rate has been under 1 --- more like 0.8 --- for 20 years), you have a pretty near irreversible problem.
As I said, no known society has ever recovered from this. I didn't do the calculations, anyway. Did you check the links?
Sigh. If I believed that, I'd have fourteen children when I reached 52.
Although it's not really relevant to population-wide reproductive outcomes, I believe that the "loss," as it were, of around 15 years of fertile time for women is almost entirely the result of lifestyle choices, not nature. In modern industrial societies, we're actually seeing a longer period between menarchy and menopause than has ever previously been observed. If most women can't have a child at 40, it's often because they spent the previous 25 years trashing their reproductive systems.
There is a big difference between raw intelligence, such as IQ tests measure, and education.
You can pour a lot of energy into trying to educate people with IQs of 75 and not achieve much. This is known among liberals as the mysterious “achievement gap”, which to them is completely mysterious.
Europeans started inhabiting Europe somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 years ago. Among other factors the ice age probably increased the intelligence of the proto-Europeans, by forcing them to find new ways to survive.
The facts outlined above remain: most European nations are not reproducing themselves.
Pat Buchanan wrote an excellent book on this a decade ago:
. (Funny, he includes Japan in his category of "the West".)
Exactly. Women who have spent 25 years blocking, sabotaging, and hormonally confusing their their sexual physiology, and then at age 40 change lanes and start into some panicky reproductive project, are likely to have as many kids as Unitarians have Divine Persons: zero, with gusts of up to one.
You’re right; I was making a peripheral point. I’ve noticed among my acquaintances, though, that women who marry later than average (late 30s) having been chaste up to that point are often surprised at how quickly and easily they conceive. (Not my cousin who was 57, though ;-).
You sure can turn a phrase!
I find it hard to believe that you state in one post that Christianity cannot make people more intelligent but then credit the ice age with increasing the intelligence of the “proto-Europeans”. Are you saying that God has no power to expand the mind of man but that “mother nature” does? This would seem to defy Scripture...
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs 2:6 For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 15:33 The fear of the Lord teaches a man wisdom, and humility comes before honor.
I could go on...
I’m just thinking outside the demographic dogma/status quo box.
1. Very likely European peoples will be *forced* (do or die) to make some harsh adjustments. The 50 or so years of the social hammock we’re seeing now will be over soon. Boo hoo. Kicking a heroin habit must be hard, but some people manage.
2. There is no biological reason why women 20, 40 or 60 years down the road will not have 3, 5 or 10 kids. The motivation for that will be greatly enhanced when the encroaching muslim hordes have been kicked back to wherever they came from.
3. Retirement is a social construct that I think is historically recent. There is no biological reason that people do not work until they die or are supported within the family (3-4 generations living under one roof - like it was for centuries). Heck, my two senior partners are both older than 70 and still working every day (not for lack of funds!). They’ll die at their desks. But they love what they’re doing. Of course, this does not apply to all professions. Boo hoo.
4. Yes, the status quo is unsustainable. From that does *not* follow that the European peoples will simply disappear in 100 or 200 or ... years.
5. I don’t subscribe to doomsday scenarios (global warming, the new ice age, demographic meltdown, whatever someone comes up with to - more often than not - further their own profitable agenda...need I mention Al Gore?)
And a resounding YES to your first question! :-)
That's not dogma. That's evidence.
As I mentioned, I have no training or professional experience with demographic science. But if I don't know a lot, I suspect a lot, especially in the light of the above statistics. (While you're thinking outside the box, are you also thinking outside the facts? --- This is not a slam on you, believe me. I'm just wondering.)
It would be interesting if we had a little more evidence to discuss.
I'd love to think Europe could rebound, but the biggest obstacles, as I see it, are not economic or political, but spiritual. You've got people who have cashed out their whole inheritance because they no longer believe in the next life, let alone the next generation.
The kindergartens in London and Hamburg aren't, after all, empty. There's just few Edmunds and Annikas, and lots of Fareeds and Aaliyahs.
Yes, I see your point.
The USA becomes the Balkans.
Scary.
I’m glad I’m over 60 with a heart condition.
First of all, to make sure we’re on the same page here, I took umbrage with the author’s quoted third party (the “expert”) statement in the article, not your’s.
Now then, as you agree, it’s not impossible to turn around from that 1.3 fertility rate - hence my “linear extrapolation” comment. (As an aside, there are some who believe that all of mankind has spawned literally from only one man and one woman - Adam and Eve. So it would only take one European man and woman to get things going again. Going by the author, impossible! But let’s not dwell on that.)
I do not know whether or not any society in the history of the world has rebounded from a 1.3 fertility rate - and I posit that neither does the author or anyone else. There’s only so much we know. Respectfully, I refute your claim of “evidence”. Any number of reasons have contributed to the demise of now-extinct civilizations. War, famine, invasion come to mind. I’m just saying that I do not see any mathematical or other reason why a turn-around of low birth rates should not happen. Indeed, such an outcome seems most likely to me. Things go down, things go up...
What I really need to stress here is that I’m not arguing along *moral* lines. Just what *is possible* in the realm of biology and physics, if you will. So what if the population of, say, Germany is halved in a couple of decades. There’ll still be 40 million people, millions of them young and fertile. The social problems they’ll have to deal with would be grave. But solvable, if not in a pretty way. (This might include any number of truly horrific scenarios - think Soylent Green and Logan’s Run.) Today’s norms of what is acceptable and what is not will go right out of the door. We’ve enjoyed a couple of truly luxurious decades - well, those times may be over soon, and things will go back to what they’ve been like for millenia. To wit, GOOD-BYE WELFARE STATE. Ho-hum. Not the end of a people as such.
Can we agree on that? (My argument from the beginning.)
In Berlin during the 1970s, the woman situation was bad for the German male 20 somethings too. A German friend of mine told that he was going to Thailand to get some “action.” Apparently he wasn’t the only one. So many Berlin bachelors wanted to R&R in Bangkok that once a week there was a direct flight from Berlin Tegel Airport to Bangkok filled with hot to trot young German males.
I told him that Bangkok was the R&R center for G.I.s during the Vietnam War. He replied, “Well from whom did you think we heard about Bangkok?”
Considering the generational warfare envisioned by the Soylent Green/Logan' War dystopias, it does make a kind of bitter sense that the two generations that aborted so many millions, would themselves be euthanized by the survivors.
No offense was taken. Now, if I can make a comment about it, I would point out several things:
IQ is only one measure of intelligence, and one dealing with the solution of abstract problems. Peasants do badly on IQ tests because they don’t deal with abstract problems very well. They live in the concrete. I’ve seen it with Irish and German peasants in the last century. Remember when the Irish were stupid? Or Germans?
Given better education and soaking them in a culture with more abstracts, IQ scores go up.
Yes, indeed. I hope things will never get that bad (again), but all those “probability” musings are idle conjecture to me (and I’ll stand by that). With a good dash of vested interests (”gimme the research grant”) added.
The human creature has proven to adapt itself to averse circumstances time and again. I do not see why a highly evolved culture (”the West”) - for all its shortcomings - should fail to do so in the next century. It is where most of the current knowledge and technology are concentrated, after all. Some adjustments to current behavior will have to be made.
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