A Turn towards Gray

Fire of Liberty

Jonathan V. Last, columnist of the Philadelphia Inquirer and contributor to the Weekly Standard, has a good piece on Philip Longman's book The Empty Cradle which notes the declining birthrates throughout the world and the effects that it will have on our country and others in the near future. He gives a good rundown of this looming problem, here's a sample:

So what happens next? According to the U.S. Census, between 2005 and 2025, America's over-65 population will increase by 72 percent, because as fertility decreases, the existing population gets older. By 2050, about 20 percent of Americans will be over 65; there will be 13 million more senior citizens than there will be children under 14.

An older, contracting population is a harbinger
of dark times. In the modern welfare state, the cost of caring for the elderly is largely shifted to the government. Combine an increasing population of seniors with an increasingly expensive state pension and health-care system, and you have a portion of the budget that must grow ever larger. The options: slash benefits, overhaul the system, or raise taxes. As Longman explains: "Younger workers, finding that not only does the economy require them to have far higher levels of education than did their parents, but that they must also pay far higher payroll taxes, are less able to afford children, and so have fewer of them, causing a new cycle of population aging."

In other words, the further the fertility rate falls, the greater the incentive for people to have fewer children.

Capitalism is, historically speaking, a relatively new contraption, but recent experience suggests that capitalism and falling populations don't mix particularly well. Consider Japan and Europe. Japan's fertility rate is 1.34, 17 percent of its population is over 65, and its economy is a shambles. By 2050, Japan will lose a seventh of its population, and the percentage of citizens over 65 will increase from 17 percent to 32 percent. Italy - never, and certainly not now, a model of smoothly running capitalism--will lose 13 percent of its population, while the proportion of those over 65 will double to 35 percent. In Russia, which is already losing 750,000 people a year, that future is now.

This is something everyone needs to pay attention to. So all ya'll out there that haven't started on making those 2.1 children, get busy now to turn back the graying of America before it's too late .