Demographic Winter

John Allen's book The Future Church has an great chapter on the projected drop in human population for the rest of this century. Back in the 1970's the big panic was underpopulation -- promoted by the factually inaccurate book 'the Demographic Bomb'.  Amongst all the environmetalists today, there is a subtle and sometimes not so sublt complaint that there are too many people for the earth to sustain.  I even heard a report on NPR yesterday promoting that people should reduce what they eat principally because it reduces their carbon footprint -- oh, and oh yeah, you will lose some weight too. They think that underpopulation is okay and even necessary to conserve the worlds' resources etc. Not really. Underpopulation brings economic recession because a growing population means a growing economy. There is no economy in the history of the world that has grown with a shrinking population.  Along with a declining birth rate goes an increasing number of elderly. By 2040 the developed countries won't have enough young people working to support their elderly. Long term health care costs for the elderly will skyrocket. Immigration provides a temporary part of the solution, but the birth rates in Mexico and Latin America are dropping too.  There is a great documentary on the net called Demographic Winter which presents all this in an interesting light.

Inevitably there will be a whole range of societal shifts that need to take place. Forget about the concept of 'retirement'--especially retirement at 65. We won't be able to support such a thing. It will be more like retirement at 75 if you're lucky. Get ready for euthanasia. They will argue that we simply can't support so many elderly people who are contributing nothing and who's quality of life is negligible. Here comes Nurse Ratched to put you to sleep. Get ready for the closure of schools and colleges and the opening of rest homes. There's a good business opportunity. Buy up little colleges and turn them into retirement communities. There won't be the market for colleges then.  Or even a visiting nurse service...

What might turn it around? In some countries it can't be turned around for a couple hundred years. The replacement birth rate for the population has already been too low for too long, and it cannot now recover. One thing which might turn it around is for people to start regarding children as an asset again. When a society is agrarian a child is an asset. Many hours of labor are required to feed everyone so every child helps keep the farm going. When people move to the city and work in factories and offices a child become an expensive liability, not an asset.

However, if elderly health care is unavailable, pension funds dry up, social security goes bust, the Medicare pot is empty and insurers refuse to pay for long term elderly health care, having more kids might just be your chance for survival.

Think about it. Who is going to get the sleepy pills first? It will be the old people with no family, no one to visit, no one to object, who's money has run out. That's assuming that there are care facilities that have room for the anyone in the first place. Who's going to pay and look after all these folks who have no one?

On the other hand, if you've got lots of kids invest in a different kind of insurance plan: send one off to college to specialize in geriatric medicine. Once kids start being seen as retirement insurance people might start having more. It's terrible to recommend such a course simply out of self interest, but hey, if Nurse Ratched is coming for you with the sleepy pills, wouldn't you rather have your kids in charge?  Of course, if you raise your kids to believe the dominant themes our cultures presents to them; that there principle concern should be the pursuit of pleasure and comfort for themselves; then you may not like their ideas of altruism.  As Peter Nixon writes over at Patheos:


Our children and grandchildren are abandoning the faith because they perceive -- rightly -- that its demands are at fundamental variance with the lives we have prepared them to lead. We have raised them to seek lives characterized by material comfort, sexual fulfillment, and freedom from any obligations that they have not personally chosen. Should it surprise us that they fail to take seriously our claims to follow one who embraced poverty, chastity, and obedience to the will of God?