Why is the population decreasing so much in some countries?

[manualman]

With the amount of people there are in the world, the population decreasing slightly won’t mean much. The global population is really expected to rise, so there’s nothing to worry about.

The problem is that population reduction through loss of fertility works over decades and brings massive upheaval along with it. This is already underway in Russia and Japan where the aging population is unevenly larger than the young generation that will soon be supporting them. Few economists seem to discuss it, but the sudden drop-off in Japanese economic hegemony began in the early 1990’s, right about when their smallest baby-bust generation started hitting the workforce and the generation that resurrected Japan after WWII finished retiring. A dubious coincidence, IMO. Expect to see a LOT more of that as this effect ripples throughout the world as populous generation age, and tiny generations shoulder the burden.

Second example is in the USA where the current housing bust won’t recover for a LONG time. Think of all the Boomers reaching the empty nest years that will want to sell and downsize. Who is going to buy all those empty houses when they aborted a full quarter of their kids? Illegal immigrants? Get serious. We’ve got a scary housing market on the horizon for as far as I can see (and I’m in the business).

 

[Trebor135]

With the amount of people there are in the world, the population decreasing slightly won’t mean much. The global population is really expected to rise, so there’s nothing to worry about.

But the changes in population are uneven: a decrease in the developed world, an increase in the developing/undeveloped world.

 

[JimG]

A depopulation spiral, once begun, can be very hard to stop. That’s one reason I think that many concerns about illegal immigration are misplaced. If the fertility rate drops in the U.S. as it has in Europe (and we are very close to replacement level) immigration will be badly needed to prevent becoming a nation of ghost towns and economic collapse.

 

[sw85]

With the amount of people there are in the world, the population decreasing slightly won’t mean much. The global population is really expected to rise, so there’s nothing to worry about.

That’s hardly much comfort to the French, who have a cultural inheritance to preserve, to know that it will be carried into the future by Algerians.

 

[manualman]

A depopulation spiral, once begun, can be very hard to stop. That’s one reason I think that many concerns about illegal immigration are misplaced. If the fertility rate drops in the U.S. as it has in Europe (and we are very close to replacement level) immigration will be badly needed to prevent becoming a nation of ghost towns and economic collapse.

Indeed, we are quite lucky to have had a ready supply of eager immigrants from a readily compatible culture to ours willing to take up the slack. But that blessing is temporary. Mexico herself has been below replacement fertility for some time now.

I suspect a lot of the US total fertility rate hovering around 2.0 was due to the contributions of first and second generation Mexican-Americans. But the third gen and on, aren’t having any more kids than we are. What’s next? I dunno. How about Fillipinos? Come on in, guys. Plenty of room in the middle still…

 

[Nabooru]

I am concerned with immigration. If France keeps shamelessly letting more and more Muslim immigrants in, they’ll be paying more and more to support them (immigrants from Africa/Asia are huge users of the welfare system) while the immigrants, in their turn, will repay their kindness with extremism and a bold-faced desire to turn Europe Islamist. So they’re paying out benefits to these people - it’s costing them more to keep them there.

I do believe that people have a God-given right to choose whether or not to have children, and how many to have, in the same way they have a right to choose their mates (provided they need or want one), jobs, etc. That being said, I do believe that it’s not so much the availability of contraception itself as an anti-religious sentiment altogether. Having families is considered to be part of the Acien Régime. Now we’re all supposed to be atheist, cynical, constantly convinced that the world is an incurably awful place, no matter what one’s circumstances, and strict self-isolationism. People are selfish and have a smaller sense of responsibility towards others in general. Friends and family come and go over petty issues.

I certainly don’t believe that every person is called to be a parent. But there is this general trend towards not wanting to grow up in general. Some people call it a “contraceptive mentality” like that’s all there is to it, and contraception itself is to blame. But I consider it a anti-religious sentiment, that often doesn’t marry or have kids just to spite conservatives.
Plenty of parents with children use contraceptives.

I’m also concerned about the decline in parenting standards in general. Parents feel entitled to keep living their old lives of partying and drinking and dating and aren’t going to let a little thing like a child get in the way. Priorities don’t change. And children are frankly raised as brats. They can’t be disciplined anymore. This started in the last few decades; thus many people in my own generation are the most self-centered, shallow people you’ll ever meet. They don’t have time for religion since it has a God that is above them.

 

[Kaninchen]

Kaninchen, No doubt it is a LOT harder to identify and articulate a problem than it is to propose a workable solution. Still, it IS rather helpful to be working on the ACTUAL problem instead of working to worsen it, no? I’m not sure about your side of the pond, but around here, I hear an awful lot of alarmism about the crisis of overpopulation and what the ‘global community’ needs to do to reduce global reproduction rates. I find it more than a little suspicious that all that concern centers on the high reproduction rates that just happen to occur only in rather darker skinned countries anymore…

Well, chronic lack of education and lack of economic development would rather seem to be factors.

For starters, I think there are some easy tax policy adjustments

I think that’s the sort of thing that is more likely to work - I’d include some supply-side things like tax breaks for builders who include smaller, more-affordable homes in their developments (from a UK perspective, anyway).

Those who choose ‘childfree’ lifestyles will expect social services and benefits in their old age that can only be provided . . .

I expect the argument might be that they’ve actually paid for it.

Public funding of education is good policy, though it should be assigned to the child and parents provided the right to select the form of education the child will receive (secular or religious - gasp). Merit based higher education grants should be funded at least enough so that the best and most disciplined of each generation has the opportunity to lift the entire civilization higher.

I’ve a feeling that the system of high graduate indebtedness is likely to implode.

Property taxation should be graduated such that a basic level of land/home ownership is taxed at a lower level and more extravagant ownership is taxed at higher percentages. As I understand it, this is particularly problematic in Europe where home ownership costs are beyond the reach of many families.

Something has to be done about housing costs that doesn’t just disappear in the next round of house-price inflation, it needs to be a long-term commitment.

Also on the public policy side, I think serious academic study of the sociological effects of contraceptives IS warranted. To date, I’m not aware of any serious inquiry on the secular side into the ways in which this technology fundamentally changes attitudes and whole cultures. Isn’t that sort of thing what the fields of anthropology and sociology are for?

At the risk of breaching my own rules about survival on a Catholic board (“don’t talk about sex, don’t even talk about not talking about sex”), I can’t see the point. We all know that stuffing yourself with junk food is bad for you, bad for society, bad for health provision, bad for . . . . and people keep stuffing themselves with junk food, if the State says anything about it 'it’s the nanny State interfering in our lives."

People are not going to respond to what they see as being punished for non-compliance with Catholic doctrine, especially if they’re not Catholics in the first place. This is also why I mentioned the idea that we have to discern, from a social perspective, just what fertility rate we’re aiming for in our policies. Encouraging people to have one child or an extra child is one thing, insisting that NFP or abstinence are the only reproductive choices would be quite another.

On the religious side, we already are confident of the answer.

I don’t know if ‘we’ are that confident - beyond the idea that family life is a good thing, for example.

If there’s a message from the last 50 years, it’s that 'Let’s declare a war on contraception!" ends up with very few volunteers.

 

[Crescentinus]

Should I get the movie “Demographic Winter” for this thread?

 

[fastenatingguy]

With the amount of people there are in the world, the population decreasing slightly won’t mean much. The global population is really expected to rise, so there’s nothing to worry about.

---

Dream on friend

 

[JimG]

Should I get the movie “Demographic Winter” for this thread?

The movie can be found here. I think it is worth 51 minutes to watch it through. For myself, I think the presentation is a little disjointed, and a great many statistics are passed over too quickly. But that’s just me.

Demographic winter is a real possibility. I don’t know if it’s too late to turn things around or not. I hope so, but I’m not optimistic. We are becoming an aging society without children. The movie provides a great deal of food for thought.

 

[manualman]

People are not going to respond to what they see as being punished for non-compliance with Catholic doctrine, especially if they’re not Catholics in the first place. This is also why I mentioned the idea that we have to discern, from a social perspective, just what fertility rate we’re aiming for in our policies. Encouraging people to have one child or an extra child is one thing, insisting that NFP or abstinence are the only reproductive choices would be quite another.
…
If there’s a message from the last 50 years, it’s that 'Let’s declare a war on contraception!" ends up with very few volunteers.

Believe it or not, I think you have A point. The major problem of the last 50 years of catholic moral teaching on human sexuality is that people have taken the lazy approach of attempting to dumb the thing down to a list of what NOT to do. That’s about as dumb as trying to summarize marriage with a list of “don’ts.” It fails, because it has no inherent pursuasive power. This isn’t a failure of the actual catholic teachings so much as the way they have been presented in the last 100 years or so (LOL, like I’ve been around for that many…).

Where I think you are wrong is to conclude that since the past approach has failed, we should give up and let people do what they want. That’s not an option. Even if this were a disciplinary command, it wouldn’t be an option. I’m not terribly up to date on Jewish culture, but as I understand it, orthodox Jews aren’t terribly interested in abandoning Kosher law just because it is so widely disregarded among Jews, are they? But kosher law IS arbitrary. There’s no substantial reason (that we’re aware of anyways) not to eat pork other than to do so is disobedience. But in sexual morality, there is a REASON for the ‘rules’. And tragically few know those reasons. What catholics will need to do in the next 100 years is learn WHY allowing a mindset to form that sex and babies are separate topics unless the couple WILLS them to be related (i.e. the contraceptive mindset) is so damaging to their relationship. Once catholics ‘get it’ once again, we can live it out and explain it to others. That second part becomes easy once your life is the evidence. Arguments become unnecessary when people come to YOU and ask how you, and virtually all of your believing catholic friends and family have relatively happy and intact families (yup) in a culture full of divorce and infidelity. You don’t need as much logical argument when the evidence is so plain.

I don’t expect to engage you in depth on the topic, since going this far already breaks your personal forum rule. But I do see where you are coming from and don’t blame you for mistaking the typical catholic’s incomplete understanding of human sexuality for the ACTUAL catholic teaching on human sexuality. Understandable mistake, and one that is more our fault than yours. Chastity isn’t a list of what NOT to do, it’s a virtue in and of itself in which marriage is revealed to be a complete gift of the self to the beloved and illuminates the way in which marriage, sexual intimacy and babies are not, in fact, separate topics but facets of a supernatural jewel. The whole being so much greater than the sum of the parts.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Abortions may be brought to an end one day, but they’ll never make contraception illegal. Don’t see why it should be, either. Married couples are still having children, as they always have.

 

[JaKael02]

Abortions may be brought to an end one day, but they’ll never make contraception illegal. Don’t see why it should be, either. Married couples are still having children, as they always have.

Regular,

Your probably right. Contraception will probably be around for a looong time. I do want to highlight a few things regarding it because the widespread use of contraception is not all positive.

1960’s – 6% of white babies were born out of wedlock; 22% of black babies were born out of wedlock (1960’s)
1990’s – 22% of white babies were born out of wedlock; 68% of black babies are born out of wedlock (1992)

Some studies indicate up to 45% of the increase in the rapid rise in the divorce rate was related to the use of contraceptives.

• General lowering is occurring regarding sexual immorality
• Rise of adultery
• Increase in societal acceptance of pornography
• Psychological and Physical abuse of women and children
• Rise in sexual slavery
• Prior to contraception having adultery could result in child born out of wedlock. Now that all women are on contraception – every woman is potentially available.

Kindly,

James

 

[Kaninchen]

Where I think you are wrong is to conclude that since the past approach has failed, we should give up and let people do what they want. That’s not an option. Even if this were a disciplinary command, it wouldn’t be an option. I’m not terribly up to date on Jewish culture, but as I understand it, orthodox Jews aren’t terribly interested in abandoning Kosher law just because it is so widely disregarded among Jews, are they? But kosher law IS arbitrary. There’s no substantial reason (that we’re aware of anyways) not to eat pork other than to do so is disobedience.

Doing things like keeping Kosher isn’t just the idea that it’s ‘The Law’. In our endless bumping into the rules we’re reminded of who we are, what we are and why we do it - one cannot avoid God in a very practical sense.

I don’t expect to engage you in depth on the topic, since going this far already breaks your personal forum rule. But I do see where you are coming from and don’t blame you for mistaking the typical catholic’s incomplete understanding of human sexuality for the ACTUAL catholic teaching on human sexuality. Understandable mistake, and one that is more our fault than yours.

You can’t be on CAF as long as I have make that kind of mistake.

 

[manualman]

Abortions may be brought to an end one day, but they’ll never make contraception illegal. Don’t see why it should be, either. Married couples are still having children, as they always have.

In America, many still are. In Europe, not so much. Goto the CIA World factbook and search on ‘total fertilty rates’ if you want the unvarnished facts. Total fertility of 2.1 is replacement rate. No industrialized country on earth where contraception is widely available and socially acceptable has a TFR trend line at or above replacement level.

I’m not aware of anybody here proposing that contraception be made illegal. Just that people come to recognize it for just how toxic it really is. We’ve managed it with cigarettes without having to outlaw them. Hmm, that’s an interesting analogy, actually. Short term shallow benefit with long term fatal side effects… Government policy once treated tobacco as favorably as it currently treats contraception: subsidies to makers, no special taxes, providing ashtrays everywhere, handing them out to soldiers with ration packs. Remarkable how dumb we were, eh? Some things never change.

 

[JimG]

Abortions may be brought to an end one day, but they’ll never make contraception illegal. Don’t see why it should be, either. Married couples are still having children, as they always have.

That’s just the problem, fewer people are getting married, fewer women are having children, fewer women are having enough children to replace the existing population in many nations. That leads to an aging population, with a smaller tax base, fewer consumers, fewer workers to support large scale social programs for those retired or disabled.

It’s far from a sure thing that depopulation can be reversed, that fertility rates can be increased, or that demographic winter can be avoided. I recommend watching the movie for a least a summary of the problem. Even if demographic winter is avoided, the falling fertility rates portend decades of no growth economies and falling prosperity.

 

[Nabooru]

Regular,

Your probably right. Contraception will probably be around for a looong time. I do want to highlight a few things regarding it because the widespread use of contraception is not all positive.

1960’s – 6% of white babies were born out of wedlock; 22% of black babies were born out of wedlock (1960’s)
1990’s – 22% of white babies were born out of wedlock; 68% of black babies are born out of wedlock (1992)

Some studies indicate up to 45% of the increase in the rapid rise in the divorce rate was related to the use of contraceptives.

• General lowering is occurring regarding sexual immorality
• Rise of adultery
• Increase in societal acceptance of pornography
• Psychological and Physical abuse of women and children
• Rise in sexual slavery
• Prior to contraception having adultery could result in child born out of wedlock. Now that all women are on contraception – every woman is potentially available.

Kindly,

James

1. Prostitution and STDs were much more common in the past than they are now.
2. Adultery hasn’t risen - the awareness of it has. In the past it was simply assumed that men (and lower-class women, to an extent) would have affairs. How many kings didn’t have officially-appointed court mistresses until the 19th century?
3. All I can say is… Are you serious? Wife-beating wasn’t even outlawed in the US until the 1880s and even after that was rarely prosecuted until the next century. We should consider ourselves blessed that abuse and denigration of wives and rape and seduction of lower-class women (such as one’s house servants) is no longer considered a man’s inalienable right.
4. Bordellos were much more common in the past. Look up the history of white slavery. It is true that transportation of women and boys for purposes of sexual slavery is muh easier now than in the past. Many women forced into prostitution aren’t given contraceptives because any girls that are born to them can be raised as prostitutes as well (see Born in Bordellos).
5. Again adultery is merely out in the open now, rather than ignored and concealed. I had to do a genealogy project for an anthropology class. Much to my chagrin, when I researched my family’s first arrivals to the US, I found men who fathered multiple child with multiple women. These were poor women so at the time it wasn’t considered a big deal - poor women were assumed to have loose morals. As a result there are, for example, three J. H., Jrs. and while I’m certain of J.H., Sr.'s role, I’m not exactly sure which one of the Jr.s is my ancestor. And that’s just going by the children we know about.

 

[Nabooru]

Also, keep in mind that right now we’re in a world-wide recession. Growth rates always drop then. If we want the population to grow we have to fix the current economic crisis.

Populations have risen and fallen throughout history. Think of the Black Death and World Wars. Each time the population adapted. As I said before the only major problem I have with the current European population is the non-stop pouring on of Muslim immigrants. They threaten to take over the continent and replace freedom with sharia. Try to be a single woman or couple without children then. But Europeans are too politically correct to staunch the flow, so to speak, so they keep letting them come in even as these Muslims march in the streets to oppose their democratic governments and rape their female citizens for staying out at night. Whether or not they start having lots of kids on their own again, the Islamist immigration needs to stop ASAP.

 

[Rhuarc]

Think of it this way the less children atheists have the more the disparity will be between them and us God fearing folk. Less atheists will be better.

 

[Nabooru]

Indeed the demographics of atheism indicate that while there are more atheists than ever, their population is dropping due to their low birth rate. Thanks, China!