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Trebor135
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How is the one-child policy in China related to the low atheist birth rates in the West?
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manualman
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Sorry, but this post just reveals that you haven’t done any homework. The Western birth dearth goes back DECADES and has nothing to do with the current economic crisis. At least spend half an hour doing homework before spouting opinions, please.
Demographic population collapse is nothing like war or disease population collapse. While we’d like to think war mostly only affects young men, the reality is that it usually kills far more civilians than soldiers. It ends up killing off a fairly proportionate cross section of the age distribution and the people that survive can reform society on a relatively balanced basis. Plague tends to disproportionately hit the eldery and very young and the prime reproducing age much less so. The survivors tend to be relatively young with few eldery to support, so their economic situation is poised for recovery.
Demographic population collapse, on the other hand, results in STRUCTURES that make recovery very difficult. It’s VERY hard to convince young adults burdened by the high costs of caring for a disproportionate number of eldery in society to simultaneously have more kids than that elderly generation did, so that populations can grow again. Unreasonable, in fact. Contrary to your assertions, this is not a new situation in history. Ancient Greece, Sparta and Rome all had demographic collapses - right before their civilizations collapsed.
You’re right that the humanity is unlikely to go extinct. But there’s a long way to fall civilizationally from where we are now. The glue that holds this society together is far more fragile than most people assume.
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JaKael02
Guest
Thank you for responding to my post. My premise was that contraception is not 100% positive and there may be some negative consequences.
The correlation between contraception use and divorce rates is not too hard to see. People are able to have fewer children and have them later in marriage, they are able to commit adultery more easily and it allows communication to deteriorate. All of these things have been statistically shown to increase chances of divorce - and contraception makes them possible.
Kindly,
James
I’ll discuss just STDs here. You are correct that prior to Federal funding and school education that STDs were higher. My argument is not that the acceptance of contraception has led to an overall increase in STDs over the decades but that contraception contributes to the spread of STDs. The logic is because condoms and hormonal birth control does not reduce spread of many STDs. Contraception’s can give off the false sense of security against STDs.
I agree that Kings were notorious for mistresses. Kings are not an appropriate sample population. You are also right that awareness of adultery has increased. But you have not yet addressed how contraception does not allow for adultery to be easier than before. Previously, adultery could carry the risk of an “unwed locked baby”; now it significantly reduces that risk.
The correlation between contraception use and divorce rates is not too hard to see. People are able to have fewer children and have them later in marriage, they are able to commit adultery more easily and it allows communication to deteriorate. All of these things have been statistically shown to increase chances of divorce - and contraception makes them possible.
The booming pornography industry alone (2006 revenues were estimated at $13 billion) is enough to demonstrate the objectification of women and the female body that is so prevalent in our society.
I agree. Sexual slavery is a real modern day issue. It’s sad.
Interesting. Thank you for sharing.
Kindly,
James
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Gift_from_God
Guest
There was a time when having many children had economic importance, but we don’t live in such times anymore. Another contributing factor would probably be the legality and prevalence of abortion. If you look at the statistics, no person could argue that the population would be as it is now if abortion wasn’t accessible, especially in China where they have one-child only. The population of China is going to decrease dramatically by the end of the century
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kompaz
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China is an extreme example.
Abortion rates – defined as ratio of induced abortions to live births – throughout the developed world are around 20%. So eliminating them in a country with TFR of, say, 1.5 would increase that TFR by 20%, i.e. to 1.80. This is still far below replacement.
A very interesting case is Poland. Poland, where abortion is illegal has 1.31 TFR. Neighboring countries, where abortion is legal, have TFR at the same level or higher. To make matters more interesting, Polish women who emmigrate to UK have fertility rates well above 2.
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kompaz
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A much more interesting question is if depopulation should be reversed. As far as ecosystem stress and resource exhaution are concerned, depopulation is a good thing.
Paradoxically, depopulation should be causing an increase in prosperity. Think about it in this way. If there is a fixed amount of resources, then decreasing the number of persons to share these makes the amount of resources available per person go up.
The main reason depopulation is a problem is that the world currently uses an economic system which is based on credit. Since credit needs to be repaid with interest, the system requires a perpetual growth to support itself. Once the growth stops, the debts cannot be repaid, and the system crashes.
This is particularly apparent in social security systems. A social security system is a Ponzi scheme where a future generation finances a current generation. The system can operate only as long as a tax base increases – i.e. as long as each new generation is more numerous than the previous one, or there are productivity improvements increasing GDP (i.e. tax revenue) in a manner which offsets population decrease.
However, I’m dubious if such productivity improvements will happen, because the West has been busy dismantling its education system and cutting R&D spending for the last several decades.
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Catya
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No matter if families use contraceptives or NFP, having multiple children puts a strain on today’s families. Face it, most of us are full time wage slaves who endure lengthy commutes and go home to second shift of housework and meal preparation.
Now that we’re attempting to grow our own food and have a larger property, I can see how having a few extra kids would be an asset to folks of other generations who lived off the land.
Now that we’re attempting to grow our own food and have a larger property, I can see how having a few extra kids would be an asset to folks of other generations who lived off the land.
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kompaz
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That (in the US) probably has to do with the fact that a black man has statistically much higher chances of being imprisoned than a white man, producing a lot of broken black families. That same factor (probably) contributes to higher abortion rates among blacks.
motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/new-jim-crow-war-on-drugs
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kompaz
Guest
Exactly.
The Western economic system is currently set up in a way which makes children a liability, not an asset.
Nothing strange that people do not want to have children…
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manualman
Guest
Look deeper into this and examine carefully whether it is a noble or self-serving sentiment. Is resource over-use REALLY about over-population or is it that the very rich are stupendously wasteful?
When we establish a long pattern of population decline, is it more or less likely that each working generation will expend efforts to develop sustainable approaches to resource use or will the burden of less young people supporting more eldery lead to default selection of the cheapest and easiest short term solution? Noticed what’s happened to solar and wind power support around here lately? That’s just a couple year downturn. Imagine a decades long trend…
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kompaz
Guest
We would establish such pattern if external conditions were stable. But we won’t.
For the last 40 years, the global economy has been tracking predictions from Limits to Growth, a.k.a Club of Rome. (In fact, the match is so good, that I am amazed, given how primitive their model was…) This model predicts a crash around 2040 due to resource depletion. Once that happens, all bets are off.
It is a common error to consider the demographic winter as a problem by itself. In reality, we are dealing with a combination of demographic winter, resource depletion (peak oil) and global warming. Trying to solve any of these problems makes the others worse:
- increase fertility rate → will accelerate oil depletion and global warming
- use non-conventional oil sources → global warming will accelerate, agricultural production will drop, population decline due to famine
- reduce CO2 production to stop global warming → energy prices up, food prices up, less incentive to have children
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JimG
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Depopulation can be seen in what happened to many towns which were once thriving. They lost population, now they are stagnant or they are ghost towns.
When it comes to resources, human beings are the ultimate resource. Only human beings can increase natural resources and increase the productivity of labor through innovation. No doubt when humans lived in a hunter-gatherer type of civilization they too thought they were running out of resources—until farming was invented. We increase resources through human effort and invention.
Depopulation does not lead to prosperity. It leads to economic decline and extinction. The European economies can never recover as long as they have a declining population.
When it comes to resources, human beings are the ultimate resource. Only human beings can increase natural resources and increase the productivity of labor through innovation. No doubt when humans lived in a hunter-gatherer type of civilization they too thought they were running out of resources—until farming was invented. We increase resources through human effort and invention.
Depopulation does not lead to prosperity. It leads to economic decline and extinction. The European economies can never recover as long as they have a declining population.
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JimG
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Here is an article about the Chinese policy:
catholicworldreport.com/Item/557/a_demographic_disaster.aspx
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lerapt78
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Nabooru, I agree with you. Only I would add that the detriment to ethnic population is the influx of **any **non-ethnic population, Arab/Muslim or not. Many Europeans are getting fed up with multiculturalism, as can be seen by the current rise of nationalism in certain countries.
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JimG
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“The mass killing of born and unborn baby girls in China has created a shortage of brides in that country. So there is now what can be called “bride trafficking,” both within China and between China and its near neighbors like Vietnam and North Korea. Young girls in North Korea, a desperately poor country on the brink of starvation, are often sold by their own parents to a bride trafficker, who in turn sells the girls to the highest bidder as a wife. This is just one of the many social pathologies that the one-child policy has given rise to, and which the Chinese people will suffer the consequences of for decades to come.”
From a Steven Mosher interview here:
catholicworldreport.com/Item/972/underpopulationthe_real_problem.aspx
From a Steven Mosher interview here:
catholicworldreport.com/Item/972/underpopulationthe_real_problem.aspx
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interestedman
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Why is it so bad for a country’s population to be decreasing? I don’t really understand why this is a bad thing? If every country in the world had increasing populations at some point there would be more people in the world than could be supported.
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Trebor135
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I read somewhere that a fertility rate around 1.9 is acceptable because the country is able to handle the more gradual decrease in population, while the same around 1.3 is problematic because the nation is unable to cope with the rapid drop in population.
Maybe another poster has more info on this.
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JimG
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A persistent fertility rate that is below replacement level means that a society will not reproduce itself. It will decline and become economically unsustainable. Japan is the first example of a persistent declining fertility rate leading to economic stagnation and an aging population. European nations are now following suit. You might start with this movie: youtube.com/watch?v=lZeyYIsGdAA
Also see the links I posted above from Catholic World Report on underpopulation.
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RobbyS
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I have heard of another theory. Even in the absence of contraceptives, women have the ability not to have babies. The desire/lack of desire to have a baby will alter her fertility. Just as a man may “will”himself impotent, so too a woman. In this day and age, both men and women look upon children as more a curse than a blessing.
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Trebor135
Guest
Indeed.
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