Where have all the children gone?

Public Interest, Spring, 2005 by Eric Cohen

PROGRESSIVES have long worried that world population is rising too much and too fast, and that poor nations will never modernize if they continue to procreate without limits. But in reality, concerns about overpopulation are wholly misplaced, and the real danger ahead may result from "depopulation": a world of fewer babies, aging populations, and pension systems in crisis.

To sort out the consequences of the "new demography," we have the benefit of two valuable new books: Fewer [dagger] by American Enterprise Institute scholar Ben J. Wattenberg, and The Empty Cradle [double dagger] by New America Foundation fellow Phillip Longman. Both books cover similar territory and tell the same basic story. But they are written for different reasons. Wattenberg writes as an "optimistic realist" and "American exceptionalist." He believes that Europe and Japan are in demographic trouble, that developing countries may largely benefit from falling birth rates, and that America alone may have the civic resources to avoid the pitfalls of an aging society. Longman writes as a progressive worried that only "fundamentalists" will have children in the future. He wants liberals to have larger families, and he believes that public policies that reward parenthood are the best chance for averting the economic crisis of an aging world and the cultural crisis of religious fanaticism.

The new demography is best understood in three parts: the less developed countries (LDCs), the more developed countries (especially Europe and Japan), and the United States. Contrary to public perception, the most dramatic fertility declines in recent decades have occurred in the LDCs. From 1965 to 1970, the "total fertility rate" (or TFR, the number of children per woman) for all LDCs was 6.0; from 1985 to 1990, it was 3.8; from 2000 to 2005, it will be below 2.9 and falling. In 20 LDCs, fertility rates are already below replacement levels or soon will be--including Iran, Mexico, and Brazil. Central to this story is China, the world's most populous nation, whose TFR fell from 6.06 between 1960 and 1965 to around 1.8 today. This drop is due largely to China's coercive one-child policy. But it is also clear that the fertility free-fall in the developing world is not predominantly coercive; it is, rather, a spontaneous change in human behavior. And given that many of these nations are still poor, it suggests that modern wealth is not a prerequisite for fertility decline.

Wattenberg and Longman disagree somewhat about the economic and social significance of these changes for the LDCs. Wattenberg believes the decline in fertility rates could have mostly positive benefits, at least for several decades. The high rates of fertility in earlier decades and declining rates of infant mortality have created a large cohort of workers, better educated and more skilled than any previous native generation. This generational cohort is having fewer children and sending more women into the paid workforce. With fewer dependents and more producers, Wattenberg argues, GDP per capita in many LDCs is poised to increase dramatically. And as the local economy expands, the best and the brightest will stay home instead of heading overseas in search of economic opportunity. Wattenberg calls this the "demographic dividend."

But, as Longman points out, there are also reasons to worry. The demographic dividend must eventually be repaid. Today's generation of producers will age, and there will be fewer children (and thus fewer future workers) to support them. The LDCs, Longman says, may get old before they get rich. And so, where Wattenberg sees nations like India and China as prime examples of how the new demography might turn out well in the near future, Longman sees a potential long-term disaster: the coming of "4-2-1 societies," in which "one child must support two parents and four grandparents," even as the economy drives workers away from the farms where their dependent elders still live.

ON the question of Europe, Japan, and other modern democracies, both authors are in agreement: Depopulation is coming, and the economic and social consequences will likely be disastrous. The data are indeed staggering: Since the late 1950s, the TFR in Europe has fallen from 2.7 to 1.38--an astounding 34 percent below the replacement level of 2.1. Japan's fertility rate is 1.32. A large number of nations have TFRs between 1.0 and 1.2, including Russia, Spain, Italy, South Korea, and the Czech Republic. Generations of modern children are growing up without brothers and sisters, and roughly 20 percent of women in the leading nations of Europe have no children at all at the end of their child-bearing years.

Both Wattenberg and Longman describe the tragic consequences of these demographic changes: The declining number of workers and increasing number of retirees will leave the European and Japanese welfare states in fiscal crisis; the culture of early retirement will make it hard to extend the retirement age; the cultural opposition to immigration will make it difficult to import and assimilate new workers; the shrinking population will reduce consumer demand and diminish economic innovation; the imposition of new taxes on workers to support programs for the elderly will make it even more difficult for the rising generation to afford children of their own. And while many developed nations have recently enacted "pro-natalist" policies, fertility is still in sharp decline.