For the first time in history the demographic crossroads facing humanity offers no clear path ahead. Until little over half a century ago, Malthusian pessimism aside, the world population fell short of this planet’s possibilities with growth always urged (“Gobernar es poblar,” as Juan Bautista Alberdi wrote in 1852 in the book giving its name to the Javier Milei administration’s “Ley de Bases” omnibus bill). But a world population only reaching a billion at the dawn of the 19th century after endless ages and three billion by 1960 had already more than trebled the latter figure by the end of the millennium, thus sending overpopulation alarm bells ringing as from the creation of the Club of Rome in 1968.
Until now either population growth or control was the clear preference but today both look a dead end. Even with two-thirds of the world’s countries below replacement level (including Argentina falling sharply to 1.4 live births per woman), it took the world just 11 years to grow from its 7th to its 8th billion some 20 months ago with higher life expectancy offsetting lower birth rate – any fertility uptick would revive fears of a population explosion straining the planet even more. But consolidation of the growing aversion to maternity will only aggravate all the problems of an ageing population – the increased burdens of healthcare, retirement homes and minders for the elderly; the growing imbalance between the retired and the wage-earners funding them making pension systems unviable while at the same time the growing weight of the aged in the electorate works against reform; and last but not least, the qualitative factor of a sadder society missing the joie de vivre of youthful exuberance.
Such qualitative factors should be causing concern rather than the sheer numbers. Alarmists like to single out such forecasts as Italy's already shrinking population halving to 30 million by the year 2100, the same level as 1890. But the Italy of 1890 had enough people not only to populate the peninsula's beautiful cities but also to send out emigrants in sufficient numbers to become the dominant ethnic segment here in Argentina and account for almost 20 million surnames in the United States today, not to mention a significant presence in many other countries all the way up to Scotland's "scozzesi." The worlds of two billion people in 1927 and three billion in 1960 may have lacked artificial intelligence but the levels of human intelligence and civilisation in general were just as high as today, if not higher with more time available for thought. While we have become accustomed for generations to both economic and population growth with any dip in either seen as a deviation from the norm, demographic decline need not be viewed negatively when seen in these terms.
If seen if at all because few trends are more invisible than population decline which advances by stealth. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse (war, famine, death and pestilence) might carry more drama but have less impact on demographic trends than the far more mundane statistics of the birth rate, always the bottom line. Russian history is one case study bearing eloquent witness to this. In 1900 a Russian Empire including Finland and most of Poland numbered 103 million inhabitants – nine decades later the country had passed through two world wars (over two million and 27 million deaths respectively), the October Revolution and civil war (10 million), Stalinist purges (up to nine million) and the holodomor famine (several million) yet after all those horrors the Soviet Union ended its days three decades ago with a population of 287 million while long shorn of Finland and Poland. No major conflicts until recently since then yet the population of the 15 ex-Soviet republics has crept up to around 305 million as against almost trebling amid all the massive loss of life during a violent 20th century.
It thus basically comes down to whether women want to have children or not. In previous generations US folk wisdom presented motherhood and apple pie as core beliefs beyond any possibility of dispute but those days are long gone. Feminism and an irresponsible hedonism have been widely blamed for the loss of this sacred glow but the factors are rather more complex. Some are positive such as mercifully less teen pregnancies and others controversial such as abortion. Marital stability, often maintained in the past “for the sake of the children” when all else failed, is breaking down at the expense of children, the cost of whose upbringing and education often acts as a formidable deterrent (which nevertheless does not seem to prevent the poorest families from having the most children). Yet the most common factor would seem to be a collision course between maternity and a career.
When extreme feminists argue that full job equality and motherhood are ultimately incompatible, it is hard to dispute their logic. Mother Nature has been extremely harsh on her own gender in thrusting all the hard work and burden of bringing life into the world on the female of the species and the resulting handicap tilts cost-benefit analysis hopelessly against working women despite some remarkable exceptions. Contrary to widespread belief, the most radical feminism here is to be found not in North America but in East Asia with its extreme work ethic – South Korea’s 4B movement (four nos to dates, sex, marriage and children) or the lawsuits against Japan’s “discriminatory” Motherhood Protection Act in order to remove all barriers to sterilisation. Without such extremes here job equality is increasingly the supreme issue – thus while feminists would previously regard sports and the commentary thereof as typically male idiocies, an equal share of both is now being sought.
The logic of full job equality dictating the elimination of maternity is impeccable except for one problem – where will future generations (roughly half of whom female) come from?
--TIMES
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