Phillip Longman Ph.D.

Author: The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity

Schwarz Senior Fellow

New America Foundation

Thank you. It is a great, great honor to be here…    

I’d like to begin by drawing your attention to a very important concept in demographics. It’s called Cavett’s Iron Law of Population. It was formulated many years ago by a man named Dick Cavett.

Cavett’s law goes like this.

Dick Cavett, you might guess, is a comedian.  But his observation is not just funny. It’s also importantly true. Because, as I hope to persuade you with these remarks, the ongoing global decline in human birthrates is the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations and the future of society in the 21^st century.

Now I won’t be surprised if you find that prediction unlikely.  After all, most of us just take it for granted that there will always be more and more people in the world.

We see it in our day-to-day lives. Every year, traffic gets worse.  Every year, the price of waterfront property gets more prohibitive.   If we turn on the television, we see images of Third World famine, war, and environmental degradation

And we see it in the official numbers.

Today, world population is increasing by some 76 million annually. That’s equivalent to adding a whole new country the size of Egypt every year.

In my parents’ lifetime, world population has tripled.

Just during the 50 years since I was born, world population has more than doubled.

We have grown up, and continue to live in an era of explosive world population growth. And for most of us, this phenomenon deeply informs our world views and expectations for the future.

But now, here’s a curious fact—the first of many I will be sharing with you today. World population is still growing, but the world supply of children is shrinking.

Seems strange, doesn’t it? But it’s true. The trend started here in Europe in the middle of the last century. Today in Europe, there are 36 percent fewer children under age 5 than there were in 1960.   In Poland, the number of young children declined by a full 50 percent during this period

Now that same trend is going global. For the world as a whole, the absolute number of children aged 0-4 is actually 6 million lower today than it was in 1990.

How can this be? Where have all the children gone?

To be sure, war, hunger and disease still carry away millions of the world’s children. In parts of Africa, as many as 20 children die for every 100 that are born.

But as horrible as this reality is, it’s not the explanation for the shrinking supply of children. Child and infant mortality are generally improving throughout the world, often dramatically. What has changed is something much bigger and newer and stranger.

It’s happening in rich countries. It’s happening in poor countries. It’s happening in Catholic countries; it’s happening in Protestant countries. It’s happening in Muslim countries, both Shia and Sunni. It’s happening throughout the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, North and South. It’s happening under all forms of government.

And just what is this big, universal trend? More and more people are having fewer and fewer children, or none at all. Birthrates are plummeting throughout the world.

As we can see from this slide, among the major industrialized countries, only the United States still comes close to producing enough children to replace its population. In modern societies such as these, the average woman must give birth to an average of 2.1 children in order to avoid long-term population loss. Why 2.1?

Think of it this way. She needs to have one child to replace herself. Then she has to have another child to replace her partner. Since some children die before reaching reproductive age, an additional one-tenth of a child is needed on average in modern countries to replace the population.

And yet there are fewer and fewer places left on earth where women still have as many as 2.1 children.

Here we see, marked in blue, the countries of the world that no longer produce enough children to avoid long-term population loss. The darker the tint of blue, the lower the fertility rate. If we were to account for the high rates of AIDS and infant mortality found through much of sub-Saharan Africa, much of that region would also have to be counted as having below replacement fertility levels.  South Africa, for example, with a total fertility rate of just 2.24 children per woman, is surely at below replacement level, given its high rates of mortality.

Where is fertility falling the fastest? Just where most people think it is growing the most: that is, in the Middle East.

Here, for example, is a chart showing Iran’s birth dearth. Who would know, from reading today’s headlines, that Iran has a birthrate that is 22 percent below replacement levels. Similarly, how many Americans know that Iran is joined by four other countries in the region that also have also slipped into sub-replacement fertility: Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, and Turkey.

Most countries in the Middle East, to be sure, still have birth rates above replacement levels, and the populations are still growing.  But everywhere birth rates are falling and the long-term trend is unmistakable. Despite the growing appeal of radical Islam for example, with its emphasis on patriarchy and pronatalism, here is what has been happening to the birthrate of Egypt:

And of Pakistan…

It’s the same story, only more so, throughout most of Asia, as we can see from this slide.

In China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, birth rates have dropped so low that we see the emergence of so-called 4-2-1 societies. These are societies in which single child families are the norm, and each single child eventually becomes responsible for supporting two parents and four grandparents.   

Despite the images you see of China’s teeming cities, its working-aged population is on course to begin shrinking within ten years.  The big question for China is, will it get rich before it grows old, (as the West did) or will it grow old before it gets rich.

India is not yet on this list. As a whole, it still has an average fertility of about 2.5. But its southern provinces are already reproducing at well below replacement levels.

Eastern Europe. Same story.

In a country such as the Czech Republic, fewer and fewer children have any siblings. On current trends, it will be rare as well in another generation for anyone to have an aunt or an uncle. Similarly, nieces, nephews and cousins are becoming defunct categories.

Former Soviet Union. Just look. Between its vanishing birthrates and its very high death rate Russia has a population that is shrinking by some three-quarters of million people a year.

What about the U.S.? Within North America today, we see much the same pattern that we see in the world as a whole. That is, fertility rates are falling, and falling especially fast among historically disadvantaged groups.

Indeed, as you can see from this chart, the only major American ethnic or racial group that has experienced an increase in fertility since 1990 is non-Hispanic Whites, and that increase was a mere one percent.

Our friends to the south are also having many fewer children,  Indeed, Mexico’s vanishing population is young children is without precedent in its speed and extent.

 It’s much the same picture elsewhere in the Americas Today, the median age in Latin America and the Caribbean may be 10 years younger than in the U.S.  But as we can see from this slide, that difference will soon begin closing and virtually disappears by mid-century.   This suggest that rates of immigration from South to North America could well taper off by then.

Now some of you may be wondering, why does population continue to grow where fertility rates are well below replacement levels? The answer is the high rates of population growth that occurred in the 70 and 80s.  This population growth wasn’t the result of high birthrates, but of falling death rates, particularly for the children in the Third World.  And today, that accomplishment leaves a large percentage of the population still in its prime reproductive years.

But as we can see from this slide, this momentum effect is dwindling quickly. In many countries, such as Italy and Spain, population momentum has already turned negative. That is to say, the number of women of childbearing age has been declining for decades. Today in Italy, there are only half as many women of childbearing age as there were in 1960. As that supply declines, it creates a powerful force toward depopulation. After a point, even if the average woman in the future winds up having substantially more children than her mother did, population will still fall.

Here’s another curious feature of early 21st century demography—something I’m pretty sure mankind has never seen before. World population is still growing, but almost all of that growth is due to people who have already been born. I know it sounds impossible. But it’s quite true.

As we’ve seen, the supply of small children is already falling. By 2050, according to one United Nation projection, there will be 248 million fewer children under age 5 in the world than there are today, and that’s after assuming birthrates rise in the developed world.

But the population of elders will have swollen by nearly a billion. Over the next half century, then, all remaining population growth will likely come from people who are already alive, as paradoxical as that might seem.

How sure the trend?

Now what is driving these trends, and how likely are they to continue?

In developed countries, sheer economics no doubt play a major role in explaining why children have become so scarce. In today’s advanced economies, many people are not even done with school before their fertility (or their partner’s) begins to decline.

Then there is the rising cost of raising children. In the U.S., the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through age 18, according to government estimates, exceeds $200,000—not including college.

As women, as well as men, have gained new economic opportunities, the cost of children in the form of foregone wages and compromised careers can often be much, much higher. In my book, The Empty Cradle, I show how, for a typical middle-class couple, the opportunity cost of raising child just through age 18 can easily surpass $1 million—again, not including the cost of college.

Meanwhile, although social security systems around the world, as well as private pension plans, depend critically on the human capital created by parents, they provide huge incentives to remain childless. We no longer must have kids to find support in old age. Instead, we can rely on retirement benefits paid for by other people’s children.

Another, very important factor is urbanization. With the rapid growth of mega-cities, half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, where children offer little or no economic benefit to their parents.  This trend shows no sign of abetting.

The widespread use of safe and effective contraception and abortion also makes a big difference. Today, among married or co-habiting women of reproductive age, slightly more than 50 percent are using modern contraceptive methods.  This is true in rich and poor countries alike.

There is also the more subjective, but perhaps more important question of how cultural and religious values affect fertility. Analysis of polling data shows a strong correlation between holding what we might call modern, individualistic secular values and low fertility.

For example, do you distrust the army? Among Europeans, at least, those who say they do are far less likely to be married and have kids, or ever to get married and have kids, than those who have no problem with the military.

Do you think the most important quality in education is developing imagination and independence? Then according to polling data, there’s little chance you’ll have a large family.

Or again, are you not very proud of your nationality? Do you have little identification with the village or town you grew up in?

Do you find soft drugs, homosexuality, suicide and euthanasia acceptable? For whatever reason, people answering affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live in childless, cohabitating unions than those who answer negatively.

A variety of other modern attitudes also go hand-in-hand with low fertility. In Brazil, for example, birthrates have dropped, province by province, coincident with the introduction of television. Today, the number of hours that a Brazilian woman spends watching television strongly predicts how many children she will have.

What’s on Brazilian television? Mostly domestically produced soap operas, called telenovelas. These soaps rarely address reproductive issues directly. Instead, they typically depict wealthy individuals living the high life in big cities.

The men are dashing, lustful, power-hungry and unattached.

The women are lithesome, manipulative, independent and in control of their own bodies. The few who have young children delegate their care to nannies.

The telenovelas thus reinforce a cultural message that is conveyed as well by many North American and European cultural exports: that people with wealth and sophistication are people who have at most one or two children.

Implications

So this is the new reality of human population. What are the implications? Should we laugh or cry, be thankful or wary?

I hope we can discuss that in greater detail during the question and answer period.  Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this one last thought.

You might wonder: Won’t persistent, sub-replacement fertility lead to eventual extinction? On current trends, Europe’s population, for example, just withers away. But I don’t expect current trends to continue indefinitely in Europe or the West in general, for a special reason.

In Asian countries such as Japan, nearly every eventually marries and eventually has one child. In Europe, and the West in general, by contrast, there is far more diversity in reproductive behavior. In my generation of Americans, for example, nearly a fifth of us never had children, and another 17 percent had only one.

The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of what children are being born are being produced a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?

The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups.  But the more accurate answer is deeply religious people.

To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, Islamic or Christian fundamentalists or evangelicals, devout member of all these Abrahamic religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.  

In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and non-believers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent.   Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. 

If meanwhile childlessness is widespread among the non-religious, the faithful begin to inherit society by default. Total population may fall, perhaps for quite a while; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family.

Remember Cavitt’s law. “If your parents never had children, chances are you won’t as well.”

A corollary might be, if you forgot to have children, chances are your descendents won’t grow up to be secular humanists.

Remember, too, that other strong finding of sociology, which is also enshrined in European folklore: “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

This is the way of the world.

Through the broad sweep of human history there are many examples of peoples, or classes of peoples, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, sub-replacement fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Like today’s modern, well-fed nations, both ancient Greece and Rome, for example, eventually found that their elites had lost interest in the often-dreary chores of family life. Here is the Greek historian, Polybius, around 140 B.C, lamenting the fate of his country as it gave way to Roman domination:

“In our time all Greece was visited by a dearth of children and general decay of population…This evil grew upon us rapidly, and without attracting attention, by our men becoming perverted to a passion for show and money and the pleasures of an idle life.”

By the time of Caesar Augustus, birthrates among Roman nobles had fallen so low that the Emperor felt compelled to enact steep “bachelor taxes” and otherwise punish those who remained unwed and childless. Here’s an example of how he felt about the matter.

“We liberate slaves chiefly for the purpose of making out of them as many citizens as possible; we give our allies a share in the government that our numbers may increase: yet you, Romans of the original stock…are eager that your families and names at once shall perish with you.”

Needless to say, such exhortations didn’t work. Divorce became rampant in Roman society; childlessness increasingly common. When cultural and economic conditions discourage parenthood, not even a dictator—any many have tried—can force people to go forth and multiply. Eventually, the sterile, secular noble families of Imperial Rome died off, and with them, their ancestors’ idea of Rome.

But what was once the Roman Empire remained populated. Only the composition of the population changed. Nearly by default, it became comprised of new, highly patriarchal family units, hostile to the secular world and enjoined by faith either to go forth and multiply or join a monastery.  Sociologist Rodney Stark has shown that nearly all the spread of Christianity in late antiquity was the result of higher birthrates, and lower death rates, enjoyed by Christians.  

With these changes came a Medieval Europe, but not the end of Europe, nor the end of Western Civilization. But secularism and individual freedom went into a long decline. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to enlightened, but it isstill very much with us.