What’s Wrong with the World

I wonder why people even in a system with Social Security don't see all the remaining reasons for having kids and raising them right. Aside from the fact that Social Security can't help with loneliness, there are an awful lot of areas in which good, grown-up kids can help and in which you'd much rather have a family member than a stranger to help you, even if you could afford a stranger to do it. For example, even if elderly parents don't live with children, I would like to have children living near me in my old age to do things like come over if there's a sudden crisis, check in on me and see that I'm all right, help me get to the store and run errands when I get feeble, and be my advocate with the medical profession if I should have to be hospitalized. There's really no substitute for nearby family for such things, and kids who have been raised to be spoiled brats aren't going to do it, or aren't going to do it well and lovingly. I don't know why people don't get that and--insofar as distant incentives do motivate having children--take that into account.

All excellent and well-made points. I'd be curious to hear what you think about two additional elements too.

One is wealth. You/one might also say -- hey, people have -- that as a country gets richer, its inhabitants tend to have fewer kids. So, is it govt safety nets or wealth that really drives the having-fewer-kids tendency? Has anyone tried to sift this out? Can it be sifted out?

The other is crowdedness. Countries can't go on filling up. There's a finite amount of land around. Besides, there's also people's preferences, and maybe they simply don't like crowds. As far as I've been able to tell, most current U.S. citizens don't love-love-love the idea of a U.S. with a population of 500 million, for instance, which'll come soon enough. 500 million was the population of India circa 1970, btw -- and people in 1970 could barely believe India had so many people.

Anyway, even if science enabled you to stack people ten deep all over the country and it was workable, maybe the people inhabiting that country simply want no part of such arrangements. And maybe their having-babies rates reflects that. Maybe a country tends to hit a certain level of wealth and a certain density of population (which I imagine would be different depending on history, weather, population, etc) and people simply stop having so many kids.

Maybe all the above isn't a complete explanation, any more than the existence of govt safety nets is. But is there any reason to think that they play zero role?

"With state-run Social Security, the government has largely assumed this family responsibility. Married couples have a greatly diminished economic incentive to have children, because now they are counting on--and paying for--government-based old age support."

It's good that the neocons are finally coming around on this point, well, at least one of them is. Paleocons have been saying this for about two decades, and Capretta says it as if he just discovered this truth. Jean Raspail, for example, was writing about this in the 1970s. It's not "news," but it is true.

It also seems that a few of them are learning the truth about Iraq and immigration. Still....

Welfare
Paleos: 1
Neocons: 0

War in Iraq:
Paleos: 1
Neocons: 0

Immigration:
Paleos: 1
Neocons: 0

I hate to say it, Mr. Capretta, but we told you so.

From the demographics literature I have seen, there appear to be multiple factors that affect the decision to have less children. Lower infant mortality, higher literacy rates among women, better economic opportunities for women, even media influences like television shows which advertise happy, smaller families. If you combine all of these factors, the fertility rate is almost certain to fall to replacement levels or lower, even in countries with no welfare system.

None of this explains why parents would treat their children as pets or children would abandon their parents, but it provides some alternate reasons why women choose smaller instead of larger families.

Step2: Capretta notes that the results he cites are "after controlling for other variables." Since the potentially confounding variables you cite are exactly those that everybody always brings up, I assume that they are among those which Boldrin, De Nardi & Jones took into account. But Capretta doesn't link to their research, so that's *just* an assumption on my part.

Could someone come up with a system whereby older people would get pension benefits based on the number of children they raised. My wife and I raised 4 kids who are now adults, but are apparently being taxed to provide funds to other elderly people who years ago were going skiing while we were raising our brood--to help support the "high-livers" of yesteryear in their old age.

MB - lovely to see you here.

I'm by no means hell-bent on perpetual population growth. But, on the other hand, I wouldn't favor a policy that undermined traditional familial relationships *just because* it tended to depress population growth.

Paleocon - heh. But I don't think you "hate to say it" at all!

Lydia: "Social Security can't help with loneliness" - "you'd much rather have a family member than a stranger to help you" etc...

What can I say? These are *precisely* the sort of crucial points that somehow seem to vanish without a trace in discussions of public policy.

Just a personal tip of the hat: I love the way you go looking for connections that ought to be obvious, but aren't (at least to me and probably not to most people). I always tend to question Soc. Sec. on the "When did it become the government's business to...etc.?", which is clearly not the most important objection. Yours is: "the collapse of traditional expectations about what family members owe to one another."

Step2 says that "None of this explains why parents would treat their children as pets or children would abandon their parents", but actually it might help. Most of the reasons given (save for Michael's overcrowding worry) seem to center around the ability of money to enhance our independence at the expense of personal obligations. Maybe it's true that in this case the love of it is the root of much evil.

As to the overcrowding, Thomas Sowell wrote in 1984 that "Every human being on the face of the Earth could be housed in the state of Texas in one-story, single-family homes, each with a front and back yard. A family of four would thus have 6,800 square feet -- about the size of a typical middle-class American home with front and back yards." That was with a population of a little over 4 billion. 20-some years later, the Census Bureau projects the world's population for 5/5/07 to 6,593,039,646 (yes, they do this on a daily basis). On earth there are about 47 million square miles of exposed land, not including Antarctica, which means that "every single person on Earth, man woman and child, would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side." That would leave about "26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs." (This takes into account the amount of arable land available.) And that's per person, while in fact most people would live in some kind of family arrangement.

It may be worth worrying about at some point, but I'm not yet.

The thing that sucks about the current social security systems in the West is that their underlying principle is intergenerational transfer of wealth: The old leach off the young.

Why I should pay for old fogeys who could not bother to save for their retirement is beyond me. Remember Boys and Girls that the 50's and 60's were times of full employment and high real wages. My father was a metal worker who was able to provide a decent standard of living and put money aside on one wage: My parents were thrifty. My parents do not need to rely on me as they are financially secure. Still all those old fogeys who blew all their cash when times were good have their hand out now asking for more.

As far as I see it, the major concern about the decline in the birthrate is predicated on the fear of who is going to cough up for social security. I would have thought that the conservative position would be, that one should not want to rely on ones children at all. In fact one should aim to leave something behind for the kids instead of expecting handouts from them.

Why aren't people having children in the West?. I feel that it is because our present culture stresses personal hedonic satisfaction: Children are an impediment to it.

By the way Mr Luse, I agree with Michaeal Blowhard: Do we really want a world where everyone got their 209.000 square feet and a cow? Sure the world has plenty of space but shouldn't some of it be left alone? I reckon it should.

Anyway my 2 cents on the matter. By the way congrats on the new site.

I am going to throw in a sort of possibly "unconservative" comment here to the effect that I personally would rather live in my own home when I'm old rather than with my grown children. I'm not sure that wanting the privacy, freedom, and independence that I enjoy now--everything from the ability to decide what to buy for dinner to the responsibility for the gutters--is such a very bad thing. To me it's one of the nicest parts of being grown up, even with all the "homeowner stuff."

Also, attachment to place is supposed to be a conservative value, and I really love my home, the very bricks of the thing, and my familiar neighborhood. It would be disorienting, sad, and highly unpleasant _now_ to have to move and leave it and I suspect even worse in old age. Assuming that my children are married and that none of them can move in with me (which might bring about understandable tensions in itself), living with them in old age would mean my leaving what is familiar and beloved as a place to live.

Anyway, all of which is just to say that I'm not ready to say we're all a bunch of selfish folk in love with money if we'd rather avoid living with our kids when we're old. But I have to admit that an IRA (or TIAA-CREF,in my case) is a better shot for avoiding that than Social Security!

SP, you can call me Bill, if you wish.

You're right that the 'underlying principle' is corruptive, but I don't think it's only for the reason that 'the old leach [sic] off the young'. It is also that the redistribution of your wealth to another family erodes the sense of obligation within that family.

Sure the world has plenty of space but shouldn't some of it be left alone?

Of course. The figures take that into account. In Africa, for instance, only 28% of arable land is under cultivation. But to use, say, 50% of it would require destroying a lot of jungle. The nice thing about arable land is that a little of it goes a long way. That's why in this country we actually pay some farmers not to grow anything.

Since you acknowledge that there's plenty of space, you're not really with MB, whose surmise was, to coin a phrase, space-based. Thomas Sowell's figures were offered to counter the overpopulationists' panicked cry that we're running out of it. But that world will never exist. There are country folk and city folk and always will be. I just think that Christians ought not to let this argument in the door because it opens another to various evils, like contraception and abortion, implying that God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply is somehow rescindable.

Dear 'unconservative' Lydia,
I don't see anything wrong either with wanting your privacy and independence. But...what if? Even if you have the financial means for it, senility, illness or physical debility might not allow you to sustain it. I think Steve's worry is that the current system encourages your children to use those financial means to install you in a nursing home rather than in their own. (I admit some conditions may admit of no other alternative.)

But back to the original question: why don't we have more children? I assume it's a fairly complex problem, at least in its effects, but I think the "personal hedonic satisfaction" pointed out by SP has a lot to do with it. A society that has the leisure to so distract itself is a society with a lot of money. The fact that you have the opportunity to acquire it transforms into the obligation to make sure you do. Maybe the question becomes: is the pursuit of it reconcilable with a love of children? You'd think having money would make one more amenable to their presence, but in practice it seems to work the other way.

Back when I was a student, I used to travel a lot by Greyhound bus, 'cause I couldn't afford anything else. (Now, of course, I can't afford even that!) And every time (I mean, really - *every time*) I would end up sitting next to some elderly lady who came from G-d knows where and who was heading for G-d knows where, and who would spend half her time showing me pictures of her children and grand-children, and the other half of her time wondering why they didn't seem to care about her anymore.

Experiences like that have their effect.

One of the effects on me was to make me wonder: should it really be a goal of public policy to increase the independence of children from their parents, and vice versa?

In the end, does that make us *happier* people? Does it make us *better* people?

I don't think so.

But that seems to be *precisely* the goal of the great middle class welfare programs, like Social Security and Medicare.

If married parents were, as long as they remained married, legally entitled in retirement to X% of their own childrens' income, I bet you'd see an increase in family size and a reduction in divorce. Not to mention an increase in the number of parents who wanted to see their children productive, as opposed to "following their dreams". I'm not sure that that sort of sociological meddling would be a categorically good thing, but at least it would be my kind of socialogical meddling.

What an interesting post and an interesting area for further thought.

Of course, to add another wrinkle to a fascinating topic that assuredly will receive more attention in coming years, it might well be that a natalist programme of the sort Zippy mentions would have the effects mentioned. But on the other hand, several generations of conservatives who have taught their children to be productive instead of "following their dreams" has given us a culture dominated by the left. The cultural consequences of such a programme might be unpredictable in ways not necessarily favourable to conservatism.

The cultural consequences of such a programme might be unpredictable in ways not necessarily favourable to conservatism.

I agree: probably wouldn't be favorable, I might even go so far as to venture, since it is inherently anti-conservative to view nations as technological outputs of some man-made civilizational process. But interesting (if perhaps a bit self-indulgent) as a thought experiment.

Steyn's thesis has one big problem: the numbers don't match.

A Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.1 is the level needed to maintain a population; it's a bit higher in a 3rd-world country with higher death rates.

Sample TFR's (from the CIA World Factbook):

Mexico 2.35
USA 2.1

Azerbaijan 2.07
Turkey 1.89
Brazil 1.88
Vietnam 1.89
Algeria 1.86
Iran 1.71
Tunisia 1.73
China 1.7

And for comparison:

France 1.98
Norway 1.86

In other words, low fertility is no longer a European phenomenon. About 60% of the world's population now lives in areas with TFR's of less than 2.1 On current trends, it'll be 80% within ten years and the world population will start declining sometime between 2030 and 2050.

I'm not going to recommend Zippy's idea for a number of reasons (but he isn't really recommending it either, just throwing it out there).

But I will toss in this gem of wisdom: It isn't how many kids you have, it's how they get raised. How many (sensitive topic alert) Roman Catholic families have lots of kids and then turn them over to increasingly liberal Catholic schools? How many evangelical families send their kids to public schools?

But I'm afraid that's OT.

That's not a sensitive topic. It's just a plain fact - except maybe for the part about Roman Catholic families having lots of kids. They don't anymore. And I think you de-emphasize its importance too much. Lots of kids - if they are the fruit, and the objects, of love - are a sign of a marriage's spiritual fecundity. The prevalence of small families tells us that something is suppressing it (other factors, like infertility or late marriage, aside).

That's not a sensitive topic. It's just a plain fact...

Yep. And part of WWWtW.

Zippy, those numbers offered by Mr. Stirling, if accurate, are weird. I understand China, with its forced abortion policy, but Turkey, Algeria, Iran? Islamic countries aren't big on contraception and abortion, so I'm wondering how they come out with a lower fertility rate than the U.S. Some variable that hasn't occurred to me?

Those numbers are definitely counterintuitive. On the other hand, Afghanistan is supposed to be one of the most important places in the world for a young boy to wear a locked chastity belt, so life as actually lived doesn't necessarily follow formal religious and ideological alliances in the large. (Think Al Gore's personal carbon budget).

But I don't really have a clue, either whether those numbers are accurate or, if they are, what they mean.

"Zippy, those numbers offered by Mr. Stirling, if accurate, are weird. I understand China, with its forced abortion policy"

-- actually, the 1-child policy is no longer a strong determinant of Chinese birth-rates.

Eg., Hong Kong, where it isn't applied (and never was)now has a TFR of...

... 0.98 children per woman.

Which means that the typical woman in Hong Kong now is as likely as not to have _no_ children.

In Singapore, a largely Chinese city, it's 1.07.

In Taiwan, a Chinese democracy, it's 1.12.

In the mainland cities like Beijing and Shanghai, TFR's are now evidently running around 1 as well, voluntarily.

Effectively, rural Chinese now have very low birth rates and urban Chinese have given up reproducing.

Since China is already over 40% urban and rising fast, this will have interesting long-term consequences.

"but Turkey, Algeria, Iran? Islamic countries aren't big on contraception and abortion, so I'm wondering how they come out with a lower fertility rate than the U.S."

-- Islam does not forbid contraception; it doesn't say anything on the matter, in fact. Some more countries, with religious affiliation:

Sri Lanka 2.05 (Buddhist and Hindu)
Thailand 1.64 (Buddhist)
Argentina 2.13 (Catholic)
S Korea 1.28 (Buddhist/Christian)
Barbados 1.65 (mixed Protestant)
Bahrain 2.57 (mostly Muslim)

The _world_ TFR is now 2.59.

Whatever it is that's driving down birth-rates worldwide, it isn't secularism or the welfare state.

Neither of which is very applicable to, say, Iran -- which, at 1.71, now has a birthrate lower than Ireland, Norway, or Denmark and considerably lower than that of France or the US.

As to Social Security, note that when it was installed back in the 1930's, the average lifespan was precisely 65.

Until fairly recently, people didn't support their grandparents because by the time they were grown up and married, their grandparents were dead and one or both of their parents were either dead or going to die soon.

In pre-industrial England the average age of marriage was around 27 for men and around 26 for women. People who lived long enough to marry usually died in their 50's or 60's. Seventy -- the biblical threescore-and-ten -- was "old".

Which meant that when your oldest son (or daughter) got married, you were in your late 50's and didn't have long to live and your parents had been gone quite a while.

The problem of the elderly is essentially a new one because, while occasional lucky exceptions have always lived into their 80's and 90's, it's now _common_ for people to do so.

Thanks Bill,

I wrote a long and excellent reply to your post the other day but somehow I accidentally lost it. Here I go again

I don’t think that many couples even in days of yore actually sat down and said “Gee lets have a couple more kids to look after us in our retirement”. Poverty was widespread, life expectancy short and there was no guarantee that the kids would be there to look after them. Base on my experience of human nature, I don’t think that most folks are that far sighted in their youth. In fact reliance on the kids always seems a risky proposition. The poorhouse was a place where the elderly would end up. Check out the following site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorhouse

The picture is particularly poignant. Interesting point in that entry is that most of these places disappeared after the Social Security Act was passed. I think that is a good thing.
Australian social security was given a massive boost in 1947 and for the next fifteen years birth rates went up.

In fact in my experience, people on social security tend to have more children rather that less (unfortunately usually to different fathers) sub fertility seems to occur in those who can most afford it. The educated and the affluent are the sub fertile. Adam Smith noted it in his Wealth of Nations and common experience tends to confirm it.

But why the dropping fertility? I will reply in my next post as I have to go and cook dinner.

Hi Bill, finished dinner.

If I had to put an average on the number of kids my average patient would like the answer would be three. Less than that is usually due to economic factors. More than that is usually due to accidents. Every now and then I meet a woman who can’t stop having kids because she likes kids but I must admit that I have never met a child from a large family who wanted a large family.

Now most people have children not out of duty or potential utility but rather because of the pleasure that the children will bring to them. Their motivations are hedonistic. Offspring are seen as a good, albeit an expensive good. Children are valued according to the happiness that they will bring to an individual in totality with the other competing potential forms of happiness. So while most people want children, they also want regular holidays, careers, and personal experiences of all kinds. In fact children can shut the door to other forms of perceived happiness.

I put it to you that the main reason people limit the number of children they have is because they want the perceived good life and they will sacrifice the number of children they have to attain it(to a certain point). Where expectations are high and means are limited there will be a restriction in the number of children. Children are also an investment in time. Loss of free time is more acute the more valuable the quality of the free time. In other words a high standard of living (which gives one very good quality of leisure time) is likely to impede having more children.

Finally people are altruistic. Most people want their children to have good lives. In meritocratic societies, where there is basically competition for privilege, people will invest a greater portion of their limited resources into a child in order to ensure success for the child. Therefore less children per given resources.

Cultures which have high expectations with regard to quality of life while at same time providing limited means through competition of achieving this quality of life are likely to have low birth rates. I put it to you that this is what we are seeing in the world.

In a world which stresses happiness through hedonism, the potential joy of children competes with the potential joys of not having children. Where expectations and the standard of living are high, rising and attainable, the children miss out.

Sorry Bill, A third post

Check out the following

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/CIB/2003-04/04cib01.htm

Fertility rates in Australia during most of the 20th century. What the hell was happening in 1934 with birth rates near the present? Sans contraception, abortion and in many instances knowledge with regard to sex.

In 1961 the pill gets introduced and fertility falls from 3.5 to 3.0 then stabilizes and even goes up a bit! But from 1973 its all down hill. What happened in Australia in 1973? Basically a massive cultural shift to the left occurred in the country with the election of a Labor Government which virtually turned the country around overnight. Fertility is consequence of culture.

I confess I think the bunch of you are making a couple of mistakes ...

* You're assuming it's normal to have bunches of kids, and for populations to grow, and you're then trying to puzzle out what's "suppressing" that normal thang. Why make those assumptions? What if what we're seeing *is* the normal thang? In any case, you certainly haven't proven that what we're seeing isn't the normal thang. If S.M. Stirling's facts are accurate, it seems to me that we'd do best to assume that it is normal. To my mind what needs explaining is "Why are some people convinced that something's 'suppressing' birth rates?"

* Why is no one here considering the possibility that people are deciding to have fewer kids of their own free will? The yak is all about what's *making* people have fewer kids. That seems to me like an insult to people, and (again) evidence that assumptions are being made: namely that people ought to be having more kids. But is there any reason -- any reason at all -- to think that they aren't exercising a good deal of free will?

It seems to be the case, for instance, that once people are making a certain amount of dough that making the next dollar stops seeming that important. In other words, some of the basic economic drives and behaviors are often dramatically affected by hitting a certain income level. There's nothing wrong with this -- as far as anyone can tell, it's just part of what life's like. We need to adjust our thinking to take that into account.

Why wouldn't it be the case that people hit certain levels of prosperity (and perhaps that countries hit certain population levels) and boom, people start wanting to have smaller families?

Incidentally, no one's talking about "overpopulation." The point is - or may be, anyway -- that maybe people are expressing (via birthrates) *preferences* about population levels. Why shouldn't they? And why shouldn't we grant the possibility that that may be part of what they're doing?

Why is no one here considering the possibility that people are deciding to have fewer kids of their own free will?

I am sure they are. My own suspician is that the biggest reason why people make this choice is because sex has been culturally decoupled from reproduction, rather than because people are making any conscious economic calculation. Kids are a lot of work, having them requires generosity, and sex as recreation simply isn't generous in the way fecund sex is generous.

If people had to (that is, were driven by interior moral conviction to) give up sex entirely in order to avoid children, you would definitely see bigger families. So the reduction of sex to recreation is I think the main driver.

But of course everything is interconnected, and usually One Thing Which Explains Everything really doesn't. I think Steve's post contributes any important idea to the discussion, and that more generally by eliminating the selfish reasons for having large families we've made it so that only very personally generous and giving people actually do have large families.

More generally still, repentance and redemption start with imperfect contrition before moving on to perfect contrition**. That is, we are often motivated by selfishness before we grow up enough to be motivated by generosity.

[**] - (Forgive the Catholic reference: in Catholic moral theology imperfect contrition is when you repent out of the fear of Hell or desire for Heaven, i.e. for selfish reasons; perfect contrition is when you repent out of the love of God and neighbor, i.e. for generous reasons).

I want to throw in here quickly that the Population Research Institute has documented many, many forms of force and arm-twisting that go on in third-world countries in both hemispheres to drive down birthrates among poor women. So while in countries with no such population-suppression programs I'm quite willing to believe that people have fewer children voluntarily, I _know_ that there are countries where this really is being imposed. Nor am I talking only about China with forced abortions and IUD insertion. PRI has documented health workers badgering women in South American countries to have IUD's inserted (coming to their homes repeatedly), doctors in such countries putting papers "consenting" to tubal ligations in front of women in labor needing a C-section and saying, "Sign this," doctors refusing to sign a woman's form documenting childbirth so she can get maternity leave until the woman agrees to a tubal ligation, and so forth. In some countries in South America and Africa they have found cases of women being threatened with a cut-off of health care (government controlled or controlled by foreign aid groups) for their born children unless they agree to tubal ligation. There's nasty stuff that _does_ go on that _is_ a matter of suppressing birth rates in an external fashion. Oh, and let's not forget this one: In some African countries doctors get paid much better if they specialize in "family planning"--i.e. population control--because those programs are foreign funded. This has skewed the entire health care sector in these countries in bizarre ways towards birth control of all kinds and away from basic care. So-called "hospitals" have been found without rubber gloves and antibiotics but with just store rooms full of condoms. Desperately needed clean operating rooms are sometimes reserved for tubal ligations and vasectomies. It's a mess. And this in countries where infant mortality is still a serious problem.

It's worth considering what impact these sorts of things might be having on some of the TFR's in question. I'm pretty sure they are relevant to Mexico, though I don't know about Thailand (for example).

(1) Mr. Stirling is cherry-picking the data like crazy. The CIA World Factbook's TFR ranking (to which, unsurprisingly, he does not link, even though he cites it) is available here.

Please do click on the link, scroll through the numbers, and judge for yourself whether Mr. Stirling is even *trying* to be straight with you.

(2) I've now found an online copy of the main study on which Mr. Capretta relies, which also, conveniently, cites much of the (rather extensive) previous literature on this interesting topic. It is available here.

Again, please do click on the link - but, be warned: (1) this is a PDF file, and (2) there's a lot of math.

As I expected, the authors have considered all the obvious potentially confounding variables. They are, after all, professionals.

(3) Oh, and by the way - the idea that the statistics for Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Taiwan - three of the most singular places in the world - have anything whatsoever to tell us about China as a whole is beyond absurd.

Yes, the statement that China's 1-child policy is not a significant determinant of its fertility rate also strikes me as highly implausible, and absurd to the extent that it is supported using data from Hong Kong. Women in China are indeed _required_ to have IUD's inserted after their permitted number of children and required to have abortions for unlicensed births. These latter may even include first children when, for example, the woman is younger than the permitted childbearing age or when she is unmarried. Mr. Stirling seems to be asking us to believe that the women who act in accordance with the laws in China really are doing so almost entirely voluntarily and that those who are unwilling are statistical outliers whose different behavior, were the one-child policy abolished, would make little statistical difference. Considering the draconian nature of the policies and the ways that they are monitored and enforced, this seems implausible on its face. The Chinese government itself obviously doesn't think that its population control goals would be met if it revoked its policies. It uses propaganda to say that the programs are "voluntary," but that this claim is balderdash has been amply documented.

S M Stirling wrote:

'As to Social Security, note that when it was installed back in the 1930's, the average lifespan was precisely 65.'

But is not this statistic misleading? The 1930s lifespan of a (by today's standard) short 65 figured in drastically higher infant and childhood mortality, no? The concept of an average lifespan of 65 conjures images of 75-year-olds being a rarity, or (as Stirling puts it) being an unusual or short-lived burden on their adult children.

In fact, what I suspect the data would show is plenty of children dying of polio or influenza or what have you, with a relatively-high number of headstones with birth and death dates within 5 years of each other, driving the averages much more strongly than Stirling's assumed massive post-65 die-off. A society in which two out of three people died of childhood illness before turning one month old, and every single person who survived lived to 100 years, would have a mean life expectancy in the neighbourhood of 33 years. It would be wrong to infer from that that there were very few 80-year-olds in that society, or that people would regard human life as something that lasted only 33 years, or that one could expect members of that society to be focussing on end-of-life issues and heavily planning their estates at age 32. Two out of three of your colleagues from the maternity ward might not have made it out, but that does not mean that you could practically rule out having to take care of your 90-year-old parents in that hypothetical society. To the contrary, approximately every second person in the category of those who made it to toddling age would be over 50, even in a society in which the life expectancy at birth was 33.

MB - I can only speak for myself, of course. But I don't think that I'm assuming *anything* about what's "normal."

The *empirical* claim in question here is just that programs like Social Security tend to depress fertility rates - which is, obviously, very inconvenient for the long-term solvency of such programs.

The *moral* claim (well, *my* moral claim, anyway) - is that such programs *also* tend to undermine traditional notions about what children owe to their parents, and what parents owe to their children. And not only do I not think that's a good thing, but, well...

...I can hardly think of a worse thing.

Thanks for digging, Steve. Those numbers do change the picture considerably, although some still confound, such as the 'Catholic' outposts of Poland and Slovenia sporting disgraceful fertility rates. My instincts about most Muslim countries were, I think, basically sound with Afghanistan coming in near the top with 6.64 children born per woman. This leaves Iran and Qatar hard to explain, but next to the African countries, these places are industrialized giants of prosperity, and prosperity seems to be a common theme in low TFR's. I also haven't been able to figure out where abortion numbers fit into all this. But I find Mr. Stirling's contention that "the 1-child policy is no longer a strong determinant of Chinese birth-rates" to be absurd. Neither can I abide his assertion that "Whatever it is that's driving down birth-rates worldwide, it isn't secularism or the welfare state," since, in this country, the welfare state has had a history of driving up birthrates among its most distressed recipients, and because secularism's moral anomie regarding sexual behavior has certainly had no difficulty embracing contraception and abortion as adjuncts to sexual liberty. There is certainly something to his noting that "the problem of the elderly is essentially a new one," but noting it doesn't get us any closer to answering the question raised in Steve's post.

I don't think I have any essential quarrel with SP (though there's so much to read here I'm doing it quickly), except that he might have misspoken when he says, "In fact in my experience, people on social security tend to have more children rather that less", when he might have meant 'welfare' rather than social security. If he did mean the latter, I can only point out that the study Steve points us to comes to precisely the opposite conclusion.

My apologies to Michael B., who protests that "no one's talking about overpopulation," for when he said that "Countries can't go on filling up - There's a finite amount of land around", I had assumed that that's exactly what he was talking about.

Further, people certainly do have smaller families of their own free will, but the question we're asking is whether this is a good thing, an answer to which his praise of autonomy does not provide us.

Naturally, my sympathies lie heavily with Zippy and SP, for when people, in whatever area of the world, desire smaller families, that desire alone in not enough. They must also have the means, and if those means are primarily contraception and abortion (available, sometimes coercively, in even the poorest places, as Lydia reminds us) rather than a love of continence, then it is not unreasonable to ask if those means, and the end toward which they are directed, are in fact good. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, the poor continue to out-reproduce the prosperous. It's not pleasant to suppose that prosperity and decadence must always keep company, but they seem to have a hard time keeping their hands off each other.

Hi Bill,

You read me correctly, over her in Australia we tend to use the term social security payment instead of welfare. I'm usually mindful of U.S terminology; that one slipped through.

I'm not sure if having small families is a good thing but then again I'm not sure if having large families is a good thing either. I don't think that I have ever met a person who came from a family of six or more children who wanted to have more that two; and I meet an awful lot of people.

Contraception does not prevent children from being born, rather it prevents unwanted conception. There is nothing from stopping a family from having 12 kids and then deciding to use contraceptives. If every family wanted to have four kids and then start using contraceptives there would be no decline or aging of the population. Contraception prevents the conception of kids you don't want, not the conception of the kids you do. The issue as I see it is; what are the factors that determine family size?

I don't think that I have ever met a person who came from a family of six or more children who wanted to have more that two; ...

I know a number of second-generation large families. Perhaps the difference is geographic/cultural.

Contraception prevents the conception of kids you don't want, not the conception of the kids you do.

I assume you are referring to non-abortaficient contraception (e.g. not the Pill).

Continence does that as well, with the added benefit of not turning sex into a recreational activity with no consequences.

First, I don't think per se that the trend Steve is noticing has necessarily to do with the difference between NFP and artificial contraception, _unless_ we assume that NFP allows more unintended pregnancies, which its advocates usually argue it does not do if used correctly and carefully. It would in principle be possible for people to have the noted TFR's which create problems for the long-term solvency of old-age Social Security programs by using NFP as well as artificial contraception, and we would still be asking ourselves whether this was in part a result of a perverse incentive effect of Social Security. Similarly, we might have similar problems of disconnection between the generations regardless of the form of family planning used to result in small families.

Of course, we know that artificial contraception is in fact a big factor in the countries with these low TFR's, but I still tend to think that is a separate question from that of kids who aren't prepared to care for their parents in old age. I suppose one could argue a very general connection in terms of an overall less loving, careful, and responsible society, but that seems rather indirect.

Second, I want to emphasize again to SP that the genuinely coerced or arm-twisted use of contraception is far more widespread in countries that receive foreign aid than many seem to realize. I have to admit that those poorer countries may not have solvent Social Security systems for old age (though Mexico does have a Social Security system), so the two problems--forced contraception and a greying population in countries with SS systems--may not overlap. But statements like "contraception prevents...unwanted conception" just do seem too sweeping when it is known that there are many places where it is pushed onto people and prevents wanted conception. Speaking as a Protestant, I have to say that here a Pope was prescient, but I can't recall which one. Didn't one of the popes writing against artificial contraception make the argument that it would be used by governments to force people to have fewer children?

Finally, this does give rise to the interesting questions: Why are governments in these countries that do treat their people in this way so short-sighted? Can they not see what is going to happen with elderly people with no one to care for them? Or are they just planning--and this may be literally true, in the case of dictatorships like China--to bump off the old people in the long run anyway?

It would in principle be possible for people to have the noted TFR's which create problems for the long-term solvency of old-age Social Security programs by using NFP as well as artificial contraception, and we would still be asking ourselves whether this was in part a result of a perverse incentive effect of Social Security.

Oh, I agree. My view of NFP is not the standard-issue triumphalist neo-Catholic view.

Speaking as a Protestant, I have to say that here a Pope was prescient, but I can't recall which one. Didn't one of the popes writing against artificial contraception make the argument that it would be used by governments to force people to have fewer children?

That would be Pope Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae Vitae:

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.

Note that birth-rates in France began declining in the 1830's and had reached (roughly) replacement level by the 1880's.

In that case, in a predominantly Catholic and in fact still predominantly peasant country, long before any modern birth-control methods were available, the motivation seems to have been partible inheritance -- people didn't want to divide their property among many heirs.

The methods adopted seem to have been coitus interruptus and sheer reductions in the frequency of marital intercourse.

The same methods were the cause of the initial large fall in British fertility from the 1870's on -- from an average of over 5 children to an average of less than 3 by 1914.

Even condoms didn't become common until after 1918.

"1) Mr. Stirling is cherry-picking the data like crazy. The CIA World Factbook's TFR ranking (to which, unsurprisingly, he does not link, even though he cites it) is available here."

-- yeah, and it supports my point. Low fertility is not a product of Western welfare states, unless you count Taiwan and Thailand and Tunisia and Iran and Burma(!) as "Western" and "welfare states". They all have sub-replacement fertility.

"(3) Oh, and by the way - the idea that the statistics for Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Taiwan - three of the most singular places in the world - have anything whatsoever to tell us about China as a whole is beyond absurd."

-- uhh... I quoted them because they're all _Chinese_.

People who've immigrated from China in the US also have sub-replacement fertility levels.

BTW, making personal slurs on people who disagree with you is generally considered a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.

"Yes, the statement that China's 1-child policy is not a significant determinant of its fertility rate also strikes me as highly implausible"

-- the policy was probably significant in driving Chinese fertility rates down in the 1980's faster than it would otherwise have happened, particularly in rural areas.

What I'm saying is that it probably isn't demographically significant _now_, in 2007. China's TFR wouldn't rise much if the government simply abolished it tomorrow, and after a momentary blip the overall trend would continue down, down, down.

The reason for believing this is so is quite simple: Chinese populations _not_ subject to the 1-child policy have similar TFR's to mainland China... and in fact often have _lower_ TFR's.

Taiwan, which is essentially a Chinese province with a democratic government, has a TFR of 1.12 -- as compared to mainland China's 1.7.

Now, Taiwan differs from mainland China basically only in that it's rather more advanced economically. Birth-control there is entirely voluntary.

If this isn't an indication that Han populations as a whole have gone over to a low-fertility model, why isn't it?

The Chinese government was pushing on an unlocked door.

The 1-child policy is an atrocious violation of individual rights; it's also probably not demographically significant as of 2007. The two parts of that sentence are not incompatible.

"and absurd to the extent that it is supported using data from Hong Kong."

-- no, it isn't.

a) Hong Kong already had very low TFR's while it was a British colony prior to 1997, and

b) the 1-child policy is not applied in Hong Kong now that it's part of the PRC.

"Mr. Stirling seems to be asking us to believe that the women who act in accordance with the laws in China really are doing so almost entirely voluntarily and that those who are unwilling are statistical outliers whose different behavior, were the one-child policy abolished, would make little statistical difference."

-- yup. That seems to be what the evidence indicates.

If it isn't so, why don't Chinese women who are _not_ subject to the 1-child policy have more children?

"The Chinese government itself obviously doesn't think that its population control goals would be met if it revoked its policies."

-- actually, the Chinese government does all sorts of weird, counterproductive things and then lies about them.

I think economics make a big difference to birth rates. It's generally acknowledged that more prosperous people tend to have fewer children. Since you acknowledge that there is a notable economic difference between mainland China and the other countries you mention (Taiwan and Hong Kong), it is not plausible that the behavior of women there is indicative of what the behavior of women in mainland China would be were the 1-child policy revoked.

Mr. Stirling:

Was it a "personal slur" to say that you were "cherry-picking the data like crazy?" No. It was the simple truth.

The "Western" countries you cite (The USA, France, Norway) are all *high* outliers. The non-"Western" countries you cite "for comparison" are all *low* outliers.

If that's not "cherry-picking the data like crazy," then I simply can't imagine what would be.

Perhaps you just don't understand the phrase.

But let me offer you a chance to redeem yourself. Simple question: *are* Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan (to say nothing of Chinese immigrants to the US!) reasonably comparable to the People's Republic of China, considered as a whole, or are they not?

Mr. Stirling, again:

sorry, but I composed my last comment before reading your last couple of messages - from which I gather that you *do* think that the small, highly Westernized and wealthy enclaves of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan *are* reasonably comparable to big, largely poor, largely rural China today.

Amazing.

Hi Zippy,

It is quite possible that I'm a statistical anomaly-in that I have not met anyone from a large family who wants a large family-but I reckon I must have had dealings with more than twenty thousand people so far in my career and I must be pretty unlucky not to have met anyone like that. Still it is quite possible and I concede your point.

The point is that people are choosing to have smaller families and I don't think the expectation of social security is a factor.

I don't want to get into a discussion about the morality of contraception except to state that contraception prevents unwanted conceptions: Not wanted ones. There is nothing to stop you having six children and then using contraception. The whole argument, that contraception is a massive depressant of fertility is premised on the idea that a lot of the fecundity in the past was unintended, something btw which I am not really convinced about.

Lydia, I totally agree with you. The forced use of contraceptives onto people unwilling is a monstrous abuse of their rights of which I am totally appalled and I agree that there may a depression in the TFR in these countries as a result of it. Unscrupulous governments will use any technology they can to enforce government social objectives. Still this mechanism does not explain the fall in TFRs in most western countries where contraception is not coerced.

Still the point is that people are choosing to have smaller families and I don't think that the expectation of social security is the answer.

Hi Zippy

The line

"The point is that people are choosing to have smaller families and I don't think the expectation of social security is a factor."

was not meant to be there.

"But is not this statistic misleading? The 1930s lifespan of a (by today's standard) short 65 figured in drastically higher infant and childhood mortality, no?"

-- nope. The transition from the traditional to the modern mortality pattern was uneven. Mortality fell first among those between their 20's and their 60's, then among infants, and then among the 'quite old'.

Innoculation, simple antisepsis, clean water and better hygene, with more abundant and cleaner food, were the big factors in reducing infant and childhood mortality. They decreased mortality at all ages, of course, but disproportionately so among the very young.

The decrease in mortality in the sixth and seventh decade of life came considerably later.

By the mid-1930's infant mortality rates were already quite low in the developed world; they'd started falling sharply in the 1890's and it accelerated after WWI. Higher than now, but very much lower than the pre-1900 norm.

The _median_ age of death for people who lived to 20 was higher than 65, but not all that much IIRC (working from memory here).

There's a reason why the Bible listed "threescore and ten" as the "life of man". After that, degenerative diseases become important and your immune system starts to get wonky -- hence the "old man's friend" nickname for pneumonia, which carried old people off quickly.

Most of the post-1945 improvement in mortality has been an increase of the number of people who live to be "quite old" by traditional standards, that is, 70's and over.

On an anecdotal level, I'm 53, the youngest of 4 children.

Two of my grandparents were dead by the time my father married in 1942; another died before I was born. They died in their 40's-60's. One lived into her 70's and died when I was in my early teens, after living for a while with her daughters.

That was fairly typical. OTOH, my mother lived to be 76, and my father's 90 and going strong. I can expect, statistically speaking, to live another 40-50 years given a continuation of present trends.

"The *empirical* claim in question here is just that programs like Social Security tend to depress fertility rates - which is, obviously, very inconvenient for the long-term solvency of such programs."

-- since similar drops in fertility have occurred in both countries _with_ and _without_ such programs, it's apparent that this cannot be the explanation.

Burma has, in practice, no equivalent of Social Security. Burma now has a low birthrate. Therefore welfare cannot be the cause of the decline.

Post hoc propter ergo hoc. Social Security preceeded the decline in fertility, but cannot have caused it -- unless countries all over the world are undergoing a reduction in fertility _without_ a common cause.

"I think economics make a big difference to birth rates. It's generally acknowledged that more prosperous people tend to have fewer children."

-- this is probably due to the fact that more prosperous people are exposed to social trends first. The lower classes follow along eventually.

Traditionally -- before the mid-18th century, roughly -- prosperous people in the West had _more_ children than the poor.

Under the traditional West European demographic system, wealth was inversely proportional to age at marriage, which was the predominant factor in total fertility.

Rich people married young -- in their teens, for women -- middling people married in their mid-20's, and very poor people married late if at all.

In 17th century England, for example, as many as 25% of some generations never married.

Essentially, you couldn't get married unless you had your own "hearth" -- enough economic resources to set up your own household, by owning or renting a farm, having been through an apprenticeship in a craft, etc. This required, on average, about a decade of working as an apprentice or "servant" of some sort.

Most people left the home in their teens and then married about a decade later.

People in the American colonies married younger because land was cheap and abundant.

"My instincts about most Muslim countries were, I think, basically sound with Afghanistan coming in near the top with 6.64 children born per woman."

-- nope. Take the rank orders of the top 15:

1 Mali 7.38 Muslim
2 Niger 7.37 Muslim
3 Uganda 6.84 Christian
4 Somalia 6.68 Muslim
5 Afghanistan 6.64 Muslim
6 Yemen 6.49 Muslim
7 Burundi 6.48 Christian
8 Burkina Faso 6.41 Muslim/animist/Christian
9 Congo 6.37 Christian/animist
10 Angola 6.27 Christian/animist
11 Sierra Leone 6.01 Muslim/Christian/animist
12 Congo 5.99 Christian/animist
13 Liberia 5.94 Christian/animist/Muslim
14 Mauritania 5.78 Muslim
15 Guinea 5.75 Muslim
16 Malawi 5.74 Christian

-- as you can see, the determining factor is not religion; overwhelmingly Christian Uganda and Burundi have higher TFR's than completely Muslim Afghanistan or or Mauritania.

The determining factor is _backwardness_.

"Was it a "personal slur" to say that you were "cherry-picking the data like crazy?" No. It was the simple truth."

-- no, it was a personal slur to state that I was attempting to deceive.

You can say I'm wrong. You can't call me a liar and expect anything but a flamewar.

So retract and apologize, like a man of honor.

The whole argument, that contraception is a massive depressant of fertility is premised on the idea that a lot of the fecundity in the past was unintended, something btw which I am not really convinced about.

The assumption here seems to be that the primary mode of thought about children in the past was "intended/unintended": that people planned their children the way we plan the output of an assembly line. That in itself strikes me as a modern conceit.

But it is also off-topic, because at issue isn't whether welfare-state social security would have depressed fertility in (say) the middle ages; it is whether social security is a factor in depressing fertility now.

"The assumption here seems to be that the primary mode of thought about children in the past was "intended/unintended":"

-- People have been planning how many children they wanted for a long, long time, at least in the West. Mainly because they were anxious as to how they would provide for them.

They just did it by different means in the old days; principally by regulating the age they married, and secondarily by things like prolonged breast-feeding, which everyone knew depressed fertility.

A woman's fertility reaches its peak in the late teens and early twenties, then drops off, slowly at first and then more and more quickly -- after about 35, infertility becomes common, as many who 'delayed' childbearing are finding now to their dismay.

The "window" was narrower in the old days, as puberty came later and menopause earlier.

Traditionally, women in the West married in their mid-20's, a good decade after puberty and well after the period of highest fertility. Few married before 20; many after 30.

When times were good they married a bit earlier and fewer never married; when times were hard, the age of marriage went up and more never married, up to 25% in some periods.

The huge upswing in population growth in Britain after 1750, for example, can be entirely explained by a 3-year decline in the average age at marriage and a halving or more in the percentage never marrying. The early stages of the Industrial Revolution made it easier to get an independent livelihood.

So Islamic countries don't have "enviable fertility". Steyn's notion that Tunisians in France will somehow breed like rabbits while those in Tunisia are breeding like Danes is... ah... "silly" is the operative phrase.

Muslims have pretty much the same fertility as Christians or Hindus or Buddhists with similar levels of social development and exposure to the world economy and world media.

Eg., Mexico has a TFR of 2.39 and a literacy rate of about 92%.

Indonesia, the largest single Muslim country, has a TFR of 2.38, and a literacy rate of about 87%.

Brazil has a TFR of 1.88 and a literacy rate of 86%.

Algeria has a TFR of 1.86 and a literacy rate of around 78%.

Afghanistan, by way of contrast, has a TFR of 6.64 and a literacy rate of about 31%, and lower for women; Burundi has a TFR of 6.48 and a literacy rate of about 50%.

There, and not in their (Muslim and Christian, respectively) religions, you have the explanation for the high birth-rate.

(That and the wars against the Russians and the civil wars and then the Taliban keeping the Afghans isolated from the world.)

The _big_ Muslim countries _already_ have low-to-moderate TFR's, surprisingly low given their overall level of economic development.

Turkey 1.89, Algeria 1.86, Iran 1.71, Egypt 2.77, Syria 3.31, Pakistan 3.71, Bangladesh 3.09, Indonesia 2.38 -- and between them those have well over half the Muslims in the world.

And these are all _falling rapidly_, including the ones already below replacement level.

Pakistan was at 4.5 as recently as 2002, for example -- that's a drop of 0.8 of a child in only 5 years. Given a continuation of that trend, by 2012, they'll be below 3 and by 2020, below 2.1... and there's no reason to believe they'll stop there, either.

Morroco went from over 7 to 2.6 (or 2.35 if you use the Moroccan government's figures) in only about 25 years -- they'll be below 2.1 quite soon, and again comparison with Algeria and Tunisia indicates that it will -keep dropping- to -well below- replacement level.

The only Muslim countries with really high TFR's are ones that are very backward -- the sub-Saharan African countries, and ass-end-of-nowhere places like Yemen and Afghanistan.

Given the same environment, Muslims have the same reproductive behavior as other people.

The North African countries are already beginning to complain about illegal immigration.

The big exception to the world trends is the US.

The US is the _only_ large population in the world with a rising birth-rate -- it's been going up steadily if slowly since the early 1980's.

About 1/3 of that is due to immigration from countries of higher fertility, primarily Mexico, but that's not the main reason -- the Hispanic world has been undergoing very rapid fertility decline.

(Cuban-Americans have a TFR of 1.6; Puerto Rico is at 1.75, below the national average. Mexico has a TFR of 2.38 and falling.)

2/3 of the increase in US TFR's has been an increase in fertility among non-Hispanic whites -- the other minority groups have continued the fertility decline. Blacks are now at about the same fertility level as whites, for example, for the first time since the census began.

"*are* reasonably comparable to big, largely poor, largely rural China today."

-- China is about 43% urban now, and will be majority-urban within a few years.

People have been planning how many children they wanted for a long, long time, at least in the West. Mainly because they were anxious as to how they would provide for them.

They just did it by different means in the old days; principally by regulating the age they married, ...

At some point there is a difference in kind, not merely in means, between different ways of living. And it seems to me that "not entering into marriage until you can support a family" and "contracepting" are separated by more than just being different means to the end of planning to crank a specific number of children off the assembly line.

I don't really know what to say to people to whom this isn't manifestly obvious though. The gulf in understanding seems to me to be more than what a spreadsheet of demographic data and a good argument can bridge.

"And it seems to me that "not entering into marriage until you can support a family" and "contracepting" are separated"

-- I think you're missing the point, or at least the implications of the data.

People knew that marrying later cut the total _number_ of children they had over the course of a marriage, and did so fairly drastically, and they wanted this.

They also knew that prolonged breast-feeding cut fertility, but that it wasn't necessary and that children could be weaned much earlier -- the upper classes used wet-nurses and that was one reason they had higher fertility rates.

It was a truism of the time, repeated endlessly in contemporary writings, that a large family would push people of modest means from 'comfortable' to 'very poor', and that they should avoid this by delaying or foregoing marriage. That's what Malthus called "prudential restraint", and it was widespread.

There was intense social pressure to avoid 'irresponsible' marriage, just as there were intense social sanctions on illegitimate births -- partly because it violated moral beliefs, but just as much because it threatened to produce a child that would be a 'charge on the parish'.

The shennaningans parishes went through to push pregnant unmarried women over the border so the bastard would be born somewhere else were unedifying but common. So were various types of thinly-disguised infanticide, such as foundling homes (which had a mortality rate well over 90%).

The evidence seems to be that most people had a preferred target size -- 'two and a spare', usually, so as not to overstrain the family patrimony.

Given the infant mortality rates of the time, that meant 3-6 completed pregnancies per married woman, which, as it turns out, was precisely the average for a very long time.

By way of contrast, if you -don't- take these precautions, the average will be well over 8... and in areas that didn't have the West European family pattern, it was.

And, as I pointed out, fairly large numbers never had children at all.

Hence Western birth-rates were consistely quite low by preindustrial standards; higher than now, but not much higher than the Baby Boom period of the 50's except in some unusual times like the late 18th and early 19th centuries or on the American frontier.

And they were much lower than in societies where early, universal marriage was practiced.

Crude birth rates in Britain, for example, ran in the 25 to 37 per 1000 range most of the time. Traditional African CBR's were often over 50 per 1000.

This pattern goes far back in our history -- as far back as anyone can get any data.

I think you're missing the point, ...

The feeling appears to be mutual.

I don't see, Mr. Stirling, how your chart refutes my contention that, broadly speaking, Muslim countries are out-reproducing the developed Western nations. There are a lot of Muslim countries in the top half of that list, while all the Western nations are well into the bottom half. My claim in particular about Islamic countries was that I had thought them to believe contraception repugnant. At least they make a public show of it at U.N. type World Population gatherings, though I have no idea what they do in practice. I admit befuddlement to the figures out of places like Iran and Qatar, while you, alone among all the commenters, seem baffled by nothing. And your caution about 'backwardness,' which I equate in general with poverty, seems to support my observation that low fertility and prosperity spend a lot of time in each other's company. But what we haven't got from you is what you actually think about all this. Are the lowering Western fertility rates a good thing, a bad thing, or just 'as the world turns'?

In line with this, I don't think Zippy missed your point. I think you missed his: that, whatever the cause of declining fertility, some means to this questionable end might be neutral (as with late marriage), some might be praiseworthy (as with sexual virtue), and some might be contemptible (as with contraception and abortion). But on this you have offered no opinion.

Social P. -

This all anecdotal, but I've known a lot of happy kids from big families. You say that few of them want big families of their own, which may be true, but is not necessarily the result of growing up in one. My own uncle had seven kids, and I loved visiting them for reasons difficult to articulate. But it was a delight to watch them gathered at the dinner table. When those kids grew up, a few have had large families, but others have not, and I suspect those latter have various causes, from individual circumstances to values imbibed after leaving home.

But we're concerned here with a general trend toward lower fertility, and whether or not that's a good thing. When you say - "I don't want to get into a discussion about the morality of contraception except to state that contraception prevents unwanted conceptions: Not wanted ones" - doesn't anything about that strike you as somewhat tautologous, in the sense of being achingly obvious? If enough unwanted conceptions are prevented, might that not result in many fewer wanted ones being born? Further - "There is nothing to stop you having six children and then using contraception." Again, true, but does it actually work that way in practice? Doesn't the convenience of contraception usually transform into a habit of life? And if this habit becomes widespread in the culture, wouldn't it have some perceptible effect on fertility? It seems to me that contraception is the facilitator of the hedonism you decry, and since you are a Catholic and a physician, I'm somewhat dismayed that you would not wish to subject it to moral scrutiny.

"I don't see, Mr. Stirling, how your chart refutes my contention that, broadly speaking, Muslim countries are out-reproducing the developed Western nations."

-- for that to be true, Muslim nations _as such_ would have to have high birth-rates. But they don't.

And they would have to be avoiding a fall in fertility, and they aren't; their fertility is falling faster than rates did in the West. The decline just started later.

The most _backward_ Muslim nations have high birth rates. But so do the most backward Christian nations. The _backward_ nations are 'out-reproducing' the developed... or they were until recently. Nowadays, many poor and backward nations have also reduced their fertility.

But as to _religion_, Burundi has a higher TFR than Afghanistan; the Philippines have a higher TFR than Egypt.

The _big_ Muslim nations, like Indonesia and Pakistan and so forth, haved already seen fertility declines of 50% or more.

And many, many Muslim nations are now at sub-replacement levels of fertilty.

So the whole notion of "fecund Moslems" is obviously false.

"I admit befuddlement to the figures out of places like Iran and Qatar"

-- it's fairly simple. Islam has no strictures against contraception. In fact, the mullah-dominated government of Iran launched an aggressive family-planning program in the late 1980's, which helped get Iran started on a reduction in fertility.

However, I doubt they intended it to go quite so low as 1.71, and still falling fast!

"while you, alone among all the commenters, seem baffled by nothing."

-- I'm more interested in description than prescription. My first priority is to find _what's actually happening_.

It's important not to try to impose some schema of what you think _should_ be happening at this early point in an analysis.

If you do, the inherent human will-to-believe then kicks in and you'll vanish into a puzzle-palace of wishful thinking.

Eg., if you start out by supposing that Muslims are ideologically motivated to breed a lot, you'll find their actual behavior baffling and will probably filter out important data. If not, not.

Now, _Mormons_ seem to be genuinely more fecund because of their religious ideology. In fact, Americans in general seem to be more affected by religion in this respect than Muslims in general.

I suspect it's because the religiosity of Muslim countries is shallower and less genuine -- it's reinforced heavily by community pressure so nobody dares to publicly break ranks.

Religious Americans, on the other hand, could be secularists if they wanted to; the option is really, not just theoretically, available.

Hence when they live a religious lifestyle, they really mean it and it's more likely to affect deeply private decisions like family size.

People in the US who attend church (or synagogue) once a week are _three times_ as fertile as people who never go.

"And your caution about 'backwardness,' which I equate in general with poverty, seems to support my observation that low fertility and prosperity spend a lot of time in each other's company."

-- not quite. Being backward means being poor, but you can be poor without being utterly backward.

Most Indonesians are quite poor, but they aren't nearly as backward as the inhabitants of Niger. They're literate and are 'plugged in' to the global cultural net to a much greater degree. Hence the fertility decline.

To give you an example, in Brazil it was found that when poor peasant villages in the 'back country' of the northeast got TV -- often a communal TV -- birth-rates plunged.

On investigation, it was found that the women of those villages loved the Brazilian soap-operas. The women in the soap-operas (set in Rio or Sao Paulo and mostly set among the well-to-do) had small families and talked casually about contraception.

The women in the villages wanted to be like the soap-opera heroines. Previously their 'reference group' had been their neighbors in the village; now it was fictional depictions of upper-middle-class life in Sao Paulo.

Note that the Brazilian government has, generally, been studiously neutral about birth-control. Yet Brazil's TFR is lower than that of Peru, where the government has pushed it energetically.

For people to restrict their child-bearing, they have to:

a) be aware that this is possible;
b) have the means to do so;
c) have some _incentive_ to do so.

That is, they have to be aware that this isn't some "will of God" thing that just has to be accepted, and then they have to have a reason and a means to alter their reproductive behavior once the fact that they _can_ sinks in.

Poverty doesn't prevent this; backwardness -- isolation and lack of information -- does. To put it another way, backwardness means you haven't cracked the "cake of custom" which encompasses your life and realized that you can _decide_ what to do.

"But what we haven't got from you is what you actually think about all this. Are the lowering Western fertility rates a good thing, a bad thing, or just 'as the world turns'?"

-- more or less "as the world turns". It seems to be a general phenomenon, happening everywhere. I give you any odds you'd care to name that now we've brought Afghanistan back into the "intercommunicating zone" fertility there will start to drop, too.

The West just started earlier; but then, being the standard-bearers of civilization, we usually do.

My paternal grandmother was the youngest of 13 children. She came from a family that had been farming in the same three Wiltshire parishes since before the Domesday Book.

She had to emigrate -- her siblings ended up all over the world, while the eldest son inherited the farm, which his grandchildren still work.

Obviously, everyone can't go on having 13 children indefinitely. Simple mathematics rules that out. There aren't any more empty or thinly-populated continents. There are already rather more people than I'd prefer.

In the absolute abstract if-I-were-an-omnipotent-magician sense, I'd prefer that everyone else restricted their fertility and "we" (Westerners in general) bred like crazy.

That is, as the saying goes, 'not on'.

(Although Americans are breeding faster than other people -- which is likely to make the US relatively more important in the century to come, something I approve of.)

I'd have three or four children if we could (we can't, for medical reasons) but I've got plenty of nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and nephews, which is almost as good and less work. We're helping put them through college.

"There are already rather more people than I'd prefer." That's troubling, not knowing what its implications might be.

I also don't know how you reconcile preferring "that everyone else restricted their fertility and 'we' (Westerners in general) bred like crazy" with your morally neutral 'as the world turns.'

Some advice: I suspect your predilection for piling one comment on top of another disinclines people from wanting to respond to you, whatever truth might be on your side.

Hi Bill,

I was trying to keep on topic, as the question was "Does social security depress fertility?" Not " Does contraception suppress fertility?" I'm quite happy to discusst that proposition, but whenever it is raised on blogs such as these we tend to get a slugfest on the merits or evils of contraception. Once again trying to stay on topic.

Do I think that contraception affects fertility rates? Yes. But not nearly as much as Rad Trads like to believe? Contraception prevents unwanted births directly and therefore eliminates the "accidental births". However I do not think that its effects are nearly as great as Rad Trads belive.

Australian fertility rates dropped to near current levels in the 1920's without the presence of widespread contraception. According to the above figures tossed above we see that differnt Islamic cultures which have no strictures of contraception have wildly differing TFR's: What gives?

What suprised me as a young doctor when I first entered family practice, is how few women actually use contraceptives. Roughly speaking in my practice, appprox 25-30% of adult females that I see are on cotnraceptives, about another 25% have been sterilized after they have had their children. That leaves approx 50% taking nothing.

The main suppresant on fertility is culture, not contraception. In order to fix the problem a correct diagnosis of the disease must be made.

>"There are already rather more people than I'd prefer." That's troubling, not knowing what its implications might be.

-- I think we (humanity in general) are beginning to seriously stress some natural systems; the oceanic fisheries, for example, and water supplies in some areas.

Technologically we can support more people than we have now, possibly quite a lot more, but it'd be hard and would make crowding worse. We have to stop increasing our numbers (at least on this planet) _sometime_, so why not now?

Also I happen to like wild animals and wilderness, so I'd be happier if there were more of them and no hungry farmers pushing into the remaining wild habitats.

Ideally, a stable world population of about 1-2 billion would be preferrable, I think. That's enough to provide for an advanced division of labor; if you subtract all the impoverished peasants, that's about what's left from the present world population anyway.

"I also don't know how you reconcile preferring "that everyone else restricted their fertility and 'we' (Westerners in general) bred like crazy" with your morally neutral 'as the world turns.'"

-- one is prescriptive, one descriptive. We all have our preferences; that doesn't mean we will (or even could) get what we want, of course.

I still don't see why you should prefer one thing to another, but I see that we're not going to meet on the moral terrain and will push you no further on it. Though I share your love of the outdoors, I'll part by noting that your 1-2 billion preference is horrifying, in that it means about 3 billion people need to get lost.

Social P - I'll get back to you tomorrow evening. It's very late.

As a guy who regularly spends time between 5000 and 15000 feet above the ground over the heavily populated east coast, I can assure you from personal observation that the notion that open space is lacking is a myth. One of the most striking things about the unique viewpoint provided by general aviation is just how vast and empty the land is here -- let alone in "flyover country" or out West.

That doesn't mean I want to pave it over or anything, but the notion that we are running out of space, at least on this continent, is soundly refuted by direct observation.

Mr. Stirling: I gather (from clicking on your name) that you are a science-fiction author of some modest success - for which I certainly congratulate you.

The authors of the studies on which James C. Capretta based his piece for the *Weekly Standard* which was the "hook" for my post are *not* science-fiction authors. They are working social scientists of some distinction. And their conclusion that Social Security (and such-like programs) tend to depress fertility rates is *not* based on cherry-picked data.

Here, again, is the link to the Boldrin/De Nardi/Jones study, which includes lots of useful references to the earlier literature on this. Please do check it out. If you find yourself uncomfortable with their research and/or their methodology, I do hope that you will you will contact them about it.

Them. Not me.

But now for the comic relief:

(1) "Burma has, in practice, no equivalent of Social Security. Burma now has a low birthrate. Therefore welfare cannot be the cause of the decline."

Well, yeah! I'm perfectly prepared to believe that neither Social Security nor any equivalent thereof has exercised any downward pressure on fertility rates - in Burma. So?

(2) "...it was a personal slur to state that I was attempting to deceive...[y]ou can't call me a liar and expect anything but a flamewar."

Goodness. "Attempting to deceive." "Call me a liar." What a vivid imagination you have. Here are my actual words: "Mr. Stirling is cherry-picking the data like crazy. The CIA World Factbook's TFR ranking (to which, unsurprisingly, he does not link, even though he cites it) is available here. Please do click on the link, scroll through the numbers, and judge for yourself whether Mr. Stirling is even *trying* to be straight with you."

I stand by those words.

I think part of what's going on here may be a difference in level of focus. The Capretta article says explicitly that no one is saying that Social Security is the only cause of low fertility. So let's repeat: No one is saying that Social Security is the only cause of low fertility. That is true both in Western countries with SS old-age systems and, a fortiori, world-wide, given that many countries have no such systems.

It looks to me (from a quick look) like the study Steve cites is focusing on comparing countries that _have_ such systems and seeing how their TFR rises and falls correlate with the growth of such systems. These fluctuations, then, occur within the parameters set by those background constraints. So no one is trying to explain falling birthrates around the globe. And indeed the differerences here may not be huge, especially compared to larger fertility trends over much longer periods of time. But that doesn't mean that the growth of SS systems has no effect or no effect worth thinking about or taking into account in public policy discussions. I think if Mr. Stirling looks at the study on its own terms he will give himself the chance to think better of the thesis.

Social P:

There's no reason you and I should have a slugfest regarding contraception. We're both Catholic. :~)

If the figures from your practice can be extrapolated to the culture at large, we have 50% of women either contracepted or sterilized. To me that's a huge number.

The main suppressant on fertility is culture, not contraception. I agree heartily with the first part of that, and then would add that contraception is a big part of the culture. You kind of glossed over my point that "contraception is the facilitator of the hedonism you decry." It's one thing to want to be a hedonist. It's another to have the means of carrying it out. I'm not trying to put the cart before the horse. It is still an interesting question to me whether a hedonistic tendency made the acceptance of contraception easier, or whether the latter's widespread availablility created, or merely accelerated, our embrace of the former. I'm wondering what would have happened to the Sexual Revolution of my own generation had things not been so easy for them.

Zippy, having flown many times over the last several years, I considered making that point, but thought I'd leave it to you.

Lydia, your surmise seems well-balanced to me. I cannot see what Mr. Stirling sees when I look at those numbers, and I'm not trying simply to be stubborn.

"but the notion that we are running out of space, at least on this continent, is soundly refuted by direct observation."

-- it's not that we're running out of space, but that most of those "empty" landscapes are being intensively used for the most part, to produce food and fiber and timber for us.

A wheatfield is as human-dominated a landscape as Manhattan; and a tree-farm is not a forest.

Not that I've got anything against humans or humans using the natural world to produce what they need -- I'm no PETA type.

(ie., not a self-hater or a drooling imbecile.)

I just like having hawks and condors and lions and buffalo around too -- because those things are good for human beings (starting with me, of course). I want my descendants to have them around too.

In point of fact the worst problems nowadays are with 3rd-world countries where most people are still subsistence farmers.

"Well, yeah! I'm perfectly prepared to believe that neither Social Security nor any equivalent thereof has exercised any downward pressure on fertility rates - in Burma. So?"

-- Ah, now we're getting somewhere.

So, if Burma, Brazil, China, Thailand, Algeria, France, Tunisia, England, and Iran and many other countries (more than half of the human race, in fact) all have similar (low) birthrates -- and they do -- we are left with two possible assumptions:

a) birth-rates all across the globe, in advanced and poor countries, in Christian and Muslim and Buddhist and Hindu countries, are falling for the _same_ reasons. In which case, we should look for the common factors. Or;

b) they're all just _accidentally_ falling at about the same time and to the same degree for _unrelated_ reasons.

Eg., that England's is at 1.66 because it has a state-funded pension system, and Tunisia's is at 1.73 because they grow a lot of olive oil, or because they have a one-party system, or some other factor with nothing in common with England's experience.

You see my point? Hypothesis b) just looks a lot less convincing, doesn't it?

Particularly when it can be clearly demonstrated that European birthrates generally started falling _before_ old-age security systems were put in place.

Usually at least a generation before.

"Attempting to deceive." "Call me a liar."

What a vivid imagination you have. Here are my actual words: "Mr. Stirling is cherry-picking the data like crazy. The CIA World Factbook's TFR ranking (to which, unsurprisingly, he does not link, even though he cites it) is available here. Please do click on the link, scroll through the numbers, and judge for yourself whether Mr. Stirling is even *trying* to be straight with you."

--"unsurprisingly, he does not link" and "whether Mr. Stirling is even *trying* to be straight with you".

These both clearly imply that you think I'm trying to deceive and am being deliberately dishonest, rather than merely mistaken.

In other words, you are calling me a liar. If you were physically present, I would of course demand an immediate apology. As it is, I am regretfully forced to conclude that you are a man without honor.

Hi Bill,

I’m probably a better Catholic in theory rather than practice. I didn’t think that you and I would have a bash on topic of contraception since whenever it gets raised on sites such as Right Reason it tends to get a bit out of hand—and off topic. However here goes;

The Lord works in strange ways.

Today I had a patient whom I had been treating for post natal depression. She had recovered considerably from her condition and was now pregnant with her second child mid trimester. She came in today to tell me that she had discovered her husband in the act with another woman. She was distraught. His response was; "When would she like for him to leave?" No sorry, no apologies, no nothing: He wanted out. I had nothing smart to say.

I hadn’t thought much about this lady for the rest of the day until I was discussing your post and this poor ladies predicament with my wife. She raised an interesting point, why do fathers simply walk away from the children they have fathered and feel no sense of responsibility? Contraception stops the woman from becoming pregnant, not the man. The two children that this man had fathered were as good as dead to him. What he did was the equivalent of moral abortion. The pill certainly did not change his behaviour; something else did. His right to personal happiness is greater than his obligation to his children. The locus of evil is in his self satisfaction at the expense of the others. Self satisfaction uber alles is what I believe is at the base of the culture of hedonism. Contraception facilitates hedonism in the same way that a gun facilitates murder: the desire must be there before the mechanism can be actuated. Do guns kill people or do people kill people. The conservative position as far as I understand it has always assumed the latter.

The low life white trash that I frequently see doesn’t even bother with the pill; they go straight to the abortuary. If abortion weren’t available they just abandon their kids to welfare. Just like their deadbeat dads. The poster boy for the enlightenment, Rousseau set the example: No pill those days. You may think I’m a bit twisted but I’ve been in the sewer long enough for very little to surprise me. Do you know why most of the 50% who aren’t on the pill don’t take it? Because they do not want to get fat: It’s pretty depressing stuff.

Modernist philosophy really got going in the 30’s with mainstream acceptance about the 1950’s-60’. I was watching Kubrik’s Lolita(1962), the concept of “swinging” is raised in the movie: pretty racey stuff for what was thought to be an uptight time. The left were always morally loose and when they gained their ascendancy with the intellectual acceptance of Marxism in the 60’s, they bought their sexual morality with them.

Contraception was available in the form of condoms before the invention of the pill. Had the pill not been invented, I feel sexual morals would have slipped anyway. There was too much chipping away at the temple. Marxism was the way of the future: atheistic science was all the go: Kinsey, Masters and Johnson had done their handiwork: The conservative movement was brain dead, operating on habit rather than reason and the threat of nuclear holocaust hung over everyone’s head promoting nihilism. The proper expression of sexuality had been repressed for too long. The Church had become sclerotic and when modern culture gave it a push it all fell apart.

Sorry for the long post.

...but that most of those "empty" landscapes are being intensively used for the most part, to produce food and fiber and timber for us.

That isn't what my eyes tell me.

"That isn't what my eyes tell me."

-- let me guess; you don't have any relatives who are wheat farmers, do you?

"Post hoc propter ergo hoc" is a principle people talking about demographics should have engraved upon their hearts.

Eg., if you map them both, there's a strong correlation between very low birth-rates and a heavy concentration of olive trees... and the olive trees were there before the low birth-rates.

And as fertility rates increasingly equalize between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, the correlation is increasing.

But the olives did not cause the decline in fertility. They are, in fact, not related to it at all.

Nor is eating sorghum a cause of high fertiity, though most people who have sorghum as their grain staple do, in fact, have high birth-rates.

Hi Bill,

I did reply to your post but since I am now on the naughty list, the reply maybe waiting for verification. Maybe Mr Burton, or Mr Cella Knows where it is.

...you don't have any relatives who are wheat farmers, do you?

I actually do know what wheat looks like, and corn, and forests, and mountains, and lakes, and rivers, and cities, and suburbs, and power plants, and lots of other things. Believe it, or not.

Zippy,
It takes multiple acres of land to provide food, fiber, and fuel for humans. Just because you see only a half-acre suburban lot from 5,000 feet up, you can hardly surmise that that is what it takes to support the four people who live there. They depend on tree farms across the country for their wood and paper - tree farms that look like "forest" from a mile up, and therefore are presumably begging to be made into subdivisions. They depend on mines and wells across the world for minerals and fuel. They depend on vast expanses of "empty land" for the cotton in their clothes, the wheat in their bread, and the corn that is in nearly everything they eat. Finally, they depend on quite often vast watersheds.

Yes, we have ample land to build houses, but that there are limits, and there are often good reasons why relatively uninhabited areas are relatively uninhabited, things that may not be readily apparent. For instance, it is all very well to say that there is plenty of open space "out West," but it leaves out the fact that those, by Eastern US standards sparsely-populated, states are in many cases already short of water, and that this problem will only grow worse as population grows. Southern California depends on water from hundreds of miles away, and the Colorado river famously doesn't even reach the sea anymore, so vast are the demands on its erratic flow. Yet we are supposed to add a new Los Angeles every three years for the next fifty? Where will they get their water? The moon?

Now, it is quite likely that social welfare depresses fertility, but a decline in fertility does tend historically to precede the creation of social welfare programs. What tends to precede a decline in fertility is, simply, urbanization and industrialization. That, ultimately, is what drives this global phenomenon. As people, regardless of their putative beliefs, move en masse to cities and take up wage labor, their fertility drops. This is happening all over the world, Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, social safety net or no. It's not an iron law, but it's a pretty strong tendency.

It takes multiple acres of land to provide food, fiber, and fuel for humans.

Yes. And I am talking about vast areas of forest, mountain, etc with little or nothing other than a few country roads and an occasional cottage. In and around the densely populated east coast, not even getting out to flyover country.

Look, I'm more than willing to entertain an actual quantitative analysis based on actual verifiable facts which demonstrates that what appears with frequent regularity right in front of my eyes isn't what it seems to be. But "there isn't enough space" or "most of the space is being used to support human industry" at least looks, to my actual eyes, to be manifestly false.

My original comment, which I stand by as a direct observation with my very own eyes, was:
As a guy who regularly spends time between 5000 and 15000 feet above the ground over the heavily populated east coast, I can assure you from personal observation that the notion that open space is lacking is a myth. One of the most striking things about the unique viewpoint provided by general aviation is just how vast and empty the land is here -- let alone in "flyover country" or out West.

Where are these vast empty spaces along the US sastern seaboard?

Everywhere. Cruise from Jacksonville FL to Portland ME at 5000 feet VFR without radar advisories and one of your big "what happens if I crash" concerns will be how to survive on the ground - possibly for days - until rescue arrives, if it arrives at all.

"a decline in fertility does tend historically to precede the creation of social welfare programs"

This could be true but it's difficult to see why it would be true. ( Of course, I am not a scholar on these matters and have no intention of becoming one.) I would think that social welfare programs need taxpayers to support them.

"As people, regardless of their putative beliefs, move en masse to cities and take up wage labor, their fertility drops." This also seems worth investigating. Since my interest is in whether or not this a good thing - and I don't think it is - the Agrarians of the past may have had some good points to make.

Social P - I'll try to find out what happened to your comment. It's hard to imagine you on the naughty list.

Stirling - "If you were physically present, I would of course demand an immediate apology." He was not and you demanded one anyway. And if he were and you didn't get it, what then? Don't even come close to making threats on this site.

Personal request - The Social Pathologist's comments must *not* be held up, and he must *not* be added to any "naughty list" - if we've got one.

My e-mail got transferred yesterday (without my knowledge or consent) to a new host, so I'm missing lots of stuff.

Oh, for heaven's sake, Mr. Stirling: if the worst you have to deal with in the great big wide world of the internet is something that somebody *implies* about you - well, then. Consider yourself lucky.

But, be all that as it may, I must admit, I *am* curious about your asessment of the Boldrin/De Nardi/Jones study to which I linked earlier.

Not that either of us is at all competent to judge their work - but I'm still...curious.

Social P. - You're comment has been approved. It's up the list a bit.

Contraception facilitates hedonism in the same way that a gun facilitates murder: the desire must be there before the mechanism can be actuated.

I think I agree, while taking slight exception to the gun analogy. There are instances in which a gun can licitly be used to shoot another person, but there are none in which contraception can be used to prevent conception.

The proper expression of sexuality had been repressed for too long I'm not clear as to what you mean by that.

Most of us are better Catholics (or Christians) in theory than in practice, but it is supposed to be our habit, after rising from a fall, to remain steadfast. Of course, what I'm waiting for is to hear you say is that you consent to the Church's teaching re artificial birth control, but I may be waiting in vain, and perhaps demanding to know what I have no right to.

That story about the fellow who left his wife angers you no more than it does me. I'll bet he's demanding of his new squeezebox that she "protect" herself, so as not to unduly burden him with obligations he is likely to forsake anyway.

Social P. - You're comment has been approved. It's up the list a bit.

FYI Social P., it was the SPAM filter that got you, not naughtiness. It caused one of my comments to be held up in another thread.

Hi Zippy,

Things got a bit rowdy on the "In Saecula Saeculorum, Amen" discussion. Mr Cella issued a warning and I suddenly found that I had to be authorised to have my post, posted. So I presumed I must have been put a "naughty list". To tell the truth, I wouldn't of been upset if I had--I think coment moderation should be an option; it gives excitable types like myself time to cool down a bit. It was more that I had promised Bill a reply and I didn't want him to think I had ignored him.

Bill: I hope to get back to you later in the day or tommorrow as I have a few pressing issues which I need to address.

Oh and by the way: When I mention a case I have seen or something a patient of mine may have told me in confidence, I try to disguise the exact comments/circumstances in order to preserve that patients' confidentiality. The particulars are changed but the broad details of the cases are absolutely true, it is after all the secular confessional.

So I presumed I must have been put a "naughty list".

It seems that the true underlying explanation is that the stuff you and I post has more in common with Viagra spam than the stuff other people post.

Hi Bill, Zippy back again.

What I meant by the term;

The proper expression of sexuality had repressed for two long;

Is that the Christian religion had a bit of an ambivalent relationship with sex which ultimately diffused into the popular culture. At its core I feel was a residual Manichaeism--which still haunts the Church--pitting the spirit: good, against the flesh: bad. While having babies was a good thing, having fun wasn’t. Sexual pleasure was more tolerated rather than celebrated. In fact it’s only after Castii Connubi that the Church recognizes that there is both a unitive and procreative component to sex, approximately nineteen hundred years after the crucifixion of its founder: Talk about slow. “Good” people didn’t harbor dirty thoughts; even about their partner. In fact there always seems to be something dirty about sex; something wrong. Good wives submitted to their husbands out of duty instead of desire. No one though it a problem if a woman never had an orgasm, in fact desiring one licitly in marriage was considered suspect.

The old medical textbooks are full of horrible, and I mean horrible examples of breast cancers the size of grapefruits, prolapsed and ulcerated colons and uteri which festered for years without medical help because the good woman would shame herself by exposing herself to a doctor. I mean this was stupid, yet the virtues of immoderate modesty were praised.

Culturally, sexual expression and guilt seemed to be conjoined. People felt bad about doing what was “natural”. When Kinsey & Co. came around preaching an alternative gospel—that sex was good and normal and natural—people felt more instinctively at home with his message rather than the Church’s. After that, for the public it was guilt by association: If this teaching was wrong, then what about the others? They threw the baby out with the bathwater. The Church had shot itself in the foot.

Now I know Kinsey fabricated data and was one very disturbed individual, but the message that Kinsey preached--that sex was normal and good—was something people wanted to hear. As they say, he was at the right place and at the right time; the rest was history. Had western culture a natural conception of sexuality, Kinsey would have been a footnote of history.

Interestingly, JP2 seemed to share the modern view that sexuality is good. The theology of the body—which links spirit and flesh and proclaims good our carnality-- can be considered a novel development in Church theology only if we consider it a departure from the theology of old.

Its getting late and I will reply to your other questions tomorrow.

Only about 5% of Canada's land is arable. This is where most of the immigrants--driving over 80% of our population growth--choose to settle. I can see this here in Calgary, as what were once farms are now new, very dense subdivisions. More people and less food production. Little surprise that food prices continue to rise, in spite of the recession.

The 'green revolution' has us on borrowed time. Modern, intensive agriculture is heavilly dependant on irrigation, synthetic fertilizer and bees. Here in the Prairies, we're due for another dustbowl (they're cyclical events) and India is due to exhaust its groundwater reserves in roughly fifty years. Natural gas, used to make ammonium nitrate, keeps getting costlier. Colony collapse disorder has so decimated bees that 'bee rustlers' have taken to stealing and fencing hives--really. None of this bodes well for food prices in the future.

Developing societies, in particular, have too damn many children. Cultural preferences, not income, determine birthrates. When the Soviet government introduced mass vaccinations, full literacy and industrialization to Central Asia (along with crushing Hitler, one of their few good achievements), the birthrates of traditional Muslim families didn't change. The result was an INCREASE in population, helped by longer life-expectancy and lower infant mortality rates. Ultra Orthodox Jews in Israel--who don't pay taxes, nor serve in the army--have left secular Israelis to clean up their messes, as they continue to move their bulging families into illegal settlements, competing for land with Palestinians who also have very high birthrates. South Asia and Latin America, in particular, have irresponsibly-high birthrates and are the source of many immigrants to the 'North.'

The interethnic war in Sudan is the result of more people chasing fewer resources. As Africans and Arabs increase in number, Sudan loses more and more grazing land and water. Somehow, God isn't making more land or water; maybe people are no longer supposed to be so fruitful.

When you consider that the Axis powers started World War II because they needed 'breathing room,' the dire conditions in the heavilly-armed third world aren't pleasant to think about. There will be a South Asian Adolph Hitler, sooner or later, with nuclear weapons. Like Hitler, such a leader would promise his overcrowded, starving people (more overcrowded and starving than those of Germany, Italy and Japan, in 1939) lands to colonize. National security is as good a reason as the environment for promoting responsible population policies in the developing world.

The 'green' movement isn't exactly without fault. David Suzuki managed to sire FIVE children. The Sierra Club accepted over U.S.$100M (from David Gelbaum), with the caveat of not discussing immigration, or overpopulation. Supposedly, it's 'racist,' or 'imperialist' to restrict immigration, or tell third world people to have fewer kids.

The people driving the mass immigration movement are churches, ethno-political lobbies and land speculators/developers/builders. It's all about warm bodies. Churches need warm bodies to fill pews. Political parties need votes: the Liberals were infamous for importing voters, with the support of ethnic lobbies. Mostly, developers need a constant increase of home-dwellers (not necessarily buyers) to support 'growth.' The reasons given for mass immigration, like actuarial needs (keeping the pension system solvent) and labour shortages, are simply bogus.

You can't hide your head in the sand (or your religious text of choice). Overpopulation IS a problem.

Adam C. Sieracki

Can you say nonesense?

The reason you see less children born into established populations in wealthy society is the same reason you see more in poorer societies, and its not becouse we can afford to not have them. Take a look at whats happening with the teenage pregnancy rate right now, it has gone up. Some have attempted to wholly blame abstinence only education, others television and music... but truth be told its desperation. They don't see a future for themselves, so they either decide to get knocked up (in order to give themsevles one, as in the the case of Gloucester High) or they are too depressed to care about the consequences (so I get knocked up or get an std, life sucks anyway...its not like I have a future). This can also be seen in africa, mexico,the philippines, Papua New Guinea, pretty much any poverty stricken culture realy.

So in America,Canada,France,England,ect you see a lower birth rate amoungst established populations than you do amougnst the poorer immigrant populations (none established populations). Guess what, it's always been that way. President Roosevelt told america that "people of the soil" aka w.a.s.p. had to start having more children becouse immigrants were outbreeding them. He called it "racial suicide" (a common term at the time for this belief) and insisted that these "people of the soil" were dying out due to the lower birth rate. Text of this speech can be found here http://home.comcast.net/~nhprman/trMothers.htm

Stop repeating the past. What your saying now is no more true than when it was said in 1905. Nothing has changed. We are not dying out, the baby boom simply overincreased our numbers slightly and they are now leveling out (which is good, since it's not like we arn't overpopulated). Also with the teen pregnancy rate in countries such as america and england increasing in this dire economy,well you realy have nothing to worry about on that front. Plenty of white trash christian babies to fill the quota. You can even send some on your next crusade, maybe kill some more jews in the process... for the love of god, the crusades were a horrible waste of human life- in which whole societies were plundered in the name of christianity. They killed whole villages of innocent people along the way, for no particular reason. So stop advacting a new crusade. Especialy when condeming Islam for jihad...irony much?