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Population Implosion

Fighting the Free Fall of Fertility Rates

by Mark DeYoung

For decades, we’ve been told that overpopulation and overcrowding are two of the biggest public crises facing the modern world. Billions and billions of dollars have been spent by developed nations to control and reduce growing populations at home and in developing regions. Images of environmental ruin, overcrowded and impoverished urban centers, and an earth depleted of its finite resources have invaded the public imagination.

For all intents and purposes, the campaign to halt population growth has been an unmitigated success. While the entire continent of Europe has operated at far below replacement rate fertility (the fertility rate required to maintain a population is 2.1 children per woman) for some time now, Asia’s Pacific Rim nations are also in population free fall. Fertility rates are falling faster in the Middle East than anywhere else on earth, and in China (due in part to the success of its horrific one-child policy), population will begin a rapid freefall in 2030. South America’s largest country is already below replacement rate, and its second and third largest will likely fall below replacement in the next decade. Even in the high fertility countries of Africa, fertility rates will reach 2.4 children per woman by mid-century (keeping in mind that replacement fertility in Africa is more likely 2.33 due to high mortality from AIDS and other diseases, warfare and infant mortality).

According to UN projections, the earth’s population will no longer continue to replace itself starting as early as 2040. If these trends continue, we are heading towards extinction.

While everyone agrees that there are vast economic, cultural and geopolitical ramifications to these declining and shifting populations, there is little consensus as to how we should encourage people to start having children again.

Many countries with declining fertility rates have made various attempts to reverse the trend. In Russia, women are offered $9,200 for every child after their first (in a country where the average monthly wage is approx $330). The program has achieved little success.

In Singapore, a country that saw a rate decline of over four children per woman over the last four decades, has tried some aggressive economic incentives. $2,200 is offered for the first and second child, while couples can get $4,400 for the third and fourth. The government also provides dollar for dollar matches in special children’s savings accounts. Singapore’s government even started an official matchmaking agency to encourage more baby-making. Despite these generous incentives (and sometimes bizarre public programs), Singapore women continue to have fewer and fewer children. Many cite the contradictory messages over time. People of childbearing age grew up hearing a “Stop at Two” message and now are being inundated with the idea that “Three or More” babies is the better way.

In the ‘90s the German state of Brandenburg became alarmed at its falling birth rates. It offered the equivalent of 650 U.S. dollars for each child. Residents who had been previously inundated with the idea that every baby costs $300,000 to raise were plainly unmoved by the laughable incentive.

France is often cited for having effective pro-natal strategies. For decades they’ve offered generous maternity leave with pay, child-care stipends, tax deductions and so on. Experts attribute this success to policy that affirms both “work and children” rather than a “work or children” approach seen in other European countries. Yet, despite France’s success (that is being modeled by other countries), they still have below replacement fertility. And while it took only ten years for France’s rate to drop by a full one child per woman back in the late ‘60s, their expensive pro-natal policies have only produced the equivalent of a quarter child increase per woman in the last decade (and the rate appears to be flattening).

Many other countries with low fertility rates have tried economics-based pro-natal policies, also with limited or no success.

If economic incentives haven’t worked, what will reverse declining fertility? Graphing fertility statistics over time, there does seem to be a direct correlation (in many countries) between availability of modern contraceptives and decreasing fertility rates, as well as a strong connection with the liberalization of abortion laws.

So what would be the most advantageous policy for increasing fertility rates on a global scale? Based on the empirical evidence, governments could reduce access to modern contraceptives and place legal restrictions on abortion. In South Korea – which suffers one of the lowest fertility rates in the world after decades of encouraging no more than two children per family – abortions in the first two trimesters are permitted only in cases of threats to the mother's health, or rape, incest or severe disorders. Yet in 2005, only about 4 percent of the estimated 340,000 abortions performed in the country met those qualifications. “Even if we don't intend to hold anyone accountable for all those illegal abortions in the past, we must crack down on them from now on," South Korea's minister for health, welfare and family affairs was quoted in the New York Times earlier this month.

However, it’s another question whether dying Western nations would have the will to infringe upon what many now see as fundamental reproductive “rights” to plan family size with contraceptives (and surgically abort “unwanted” children that aren’t part of the plan).

If governments (or their constituencies) can’t or don’t have the will to reduce access to abortion and contraceptives, what else can be done? It may come down to cultural practices. Religious conviction appears to be an important indicator of family size. People who attend church regularly state an ideal family size that is larger than non-church going people, and do in fact have more children.

While governments can and should develop pro-natal policies, it really is the culture that determines whether nations sustain healthy populations over time. People must once again be taught to be open to human life, recognizing babies as gifts, not liabilities or economic calculations.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)