Don't Know Nothing 'Bout Birthing Babies

Fire of Liberty

According to this article in The Economist, the folks in Europe are experiencing some problems due to their inability to keep the birthrate at a point that is a sufficient to replace their aging populations. This decline or slow effort on behalf of the future parents in Europe seems to be based on the ever changing cultural and social attitudes that has been prevalent throughout the continent since the 1970's. Take a look:

When birth rates began to fall in Europe, this was said to be a simple matter of choice. That was true, but it is possible that fertility may overshoot below what people might naturally have chosen. For many years, politicians have argued that southern Europe will catch up from its fertility decline because women, having postponed their first child, will quickly have a second and third. But the overshoot theory suggests there may be only partial recuperation. Postponement could permanently lower fertility, not just redistribute it across time.

And there is a twist. If people have fewer children than they claim to want, how they see the family may change too. Research by Tomas Sobotka of the Vienna Institute of Demography suggests that, after decades of low fertility, a quarter of young German men and a fifth of young women say they have no intention of having children and think that this is fine. When Eurobarometer repeated its poll about ideal family size in 2001, support for the two-child model had fallen everywhere.

Parts of Europe, then, may be entering a new demographic trap. People restrict family size from choice. But social, economic and cultural factors then cause this natural fertility decline to overshoot. This changes expectations, to which people respond by having even fewer children. That does not necessarily mean that birth rates will fall even more: there may yet be some natural floor. But it could mean that recovery from very low fertility rates proves to be slow or even non-existent.

I guess until you see a movement amongst the people of Europe to preserve the cultural and national identities of their own countries you'll continue to see this slide in the birthrates. (We've seen what you get by choosing immigration as the solution. Anyone remember the riots in France last summer or the protests in certain European countries.)