Population Bomb or Bust?

by Dr. Paul S. Aijian

The Coming Reproductive Collapse

“The Population Bomb” was written in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich. I was just starting college, and the predictions were ominous. Amazon notes describe it thusly: “Ehrlich’s book warned of a future where the world’s population would outstrip available resources, leading to widespread famine and societal collapse.”

In that year, the world population was about 3.5 billion people; today it is about 8 billion. Per “Our World in Data,” the world rate of “undernourished” people fell from 12.7% in 2000 to 9.2 % in 2022. Clearly, the predicted apocalypse of starvation has not yet happened. In fact, there is a growing fear that the population of the world is slowing and will start to reverse.

A headline in the May 20, 2024, Wall Street Journal reads: “Suddenly There Aren’t Enough Babies. The Whole World is Alarmed.”

This article spells out the dilemma in interesting and numeric detail, and I recommend it to you. To add to the dire warnings that Earth is overheating, oceans are rising, and climate change is an existential threat to humanity, now this.

“The demographic winter is coming,” says Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, an economist specializing in demographics at the University of Pennsylvania. Some in his field predict the global population will begin to shrink within the next four decades, a rare event in human history.

What is happening?

The Declining Birth Rate

The Replacement Rate, or Fertility rate, is a crucial number for population stability. The make-or-break number is 2.2. This is the number of children an average woman of childbearing age needs to give birth to keep the population steady, excluding immigration. Most of the developed world has been below this rate for some time, and the trend is downward.

Empty baby cots. Source: Getty Images

The rate in the U.S. fell to 1.62 births per woman in 2023. South Korea has the lowest rate in the world, at 0.78. The rate in France has declined from 1.96 in 2015 to 1.68 in 2023. Japan’s dramatic population decline has been more in the news for some years. It peaked at 128 million people in 2008, and in 2023 had declined to 124.6 million. They have been working on the problem. Their fertility rate climbed from 1.26 in 2005 to 1.45 in 2015, however as of 2022, it was back to 1.26. In 2022, Chinese authorities reported their fertility rate at 1.09. Their one-child policy has been a disaster, although there are other reasons to explain the decline.

Even countries like India are seeing a decline in fertility. This is a country with greater poverty, more women working in the home rather than in the factory or office. These factors have usually been associated with a higher fertility rate. India’s current Replacement Rate is reported at 2.2, and declining. By contrast the highest fertility rate in the world is reported at around 7, in Niger, Africa. Globally, the rate in 2017 was calculated at 2.5. In 2021 it was down to 2.3, having declined even faster than predicted.

The Replacement Plan

We see the results of the declining fertility all around us, whether we recognize it or not. Massive immigration is occurring from underdeveloped countries to developed ones. Europe is in upheaval, as immigrants from the nations they once colonized are pouring into their countries. Boats, cars, and trains filled with immigrants without papers are being either greeted or repulsed all around the continent, as countries struggle to decide how to handle the invasion. This has been encouraged by the EU for various reasons, colonial guilt, need for workers, or just unwillingness to enforce their border. Governments rise or fall based on the citizens’ reaction to their policy on this issue. Eastern European countries have been more reluctant to open the flood gates and are involved in disputes with the EU over the matter. If there are not enough native Europeans to work in the fields, pizzerias, and manufacturing plants, then bringing in workers from other countries seems to make sense. One driving force is the collapsing birth rates of native-born citizens in all of Europe.

Douglas Murray wrote an important book in 2017 titled, “The Strange Death of Europe, Immigration, Identity and Islam.” Per the Amazon review, this book is the “account of a continent and a culture caught in the act of suicide. He addresses the disappointing failures of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt”, etc.

I remember when the book first came out, his critics accused him of being xenophobic and Islamophobic. His predictions have been borne out. France has multiple no-go zones for the police. Cities have tried to substitute Sharia law for local laws and courts. Scandinavia struggles with the problems of men who grew up in Islamic culture relating to women who are in a completely opposite one. More and more cities like London have Muslim mayors, and a growing populace who want more mosques built and to play the call to prayer. Europe is generally post-Christian, and there is less resistance to the growth of Islam and other religious practices.

No Border, No Country

In the U.S., the Southern border has been intentionally abandoned, as we all know. Reportedly, the estimate is that 10 million people have come across the border without legal permission since Joe Biden took office. Border states have NGOs welcoming them and giving them free health care, smart phones, and income support, and sending them all over the country. Some states have recently said they will enforce their borders and are being fought in court by the federal government. The INS is basically degraded to waving them through, as they head north. They have no real estimate of how many “gotaways” there are, or who they are.

This is not entirely a red or blue political issue, however. The Chamber of Commerce and other big business interests are working with the Uniparty to see that no real immigration reform is enacted, or that the actual application of existing laws occurs. Supplying workers to replace the declining American work force is a huge magnet to come here. Sadly, this policy has also encouraged the massive importation of illegal drugs which kill thousands in this country each year. It is also enabling the sex-trafficking criminals who are bringing young people across the border to go who knows where. This issue is one that will weigh heavily in the upcoming election of 2024.

Throwing Money at the Issue

What is being done around the world to solve the declining fertility and population issue? This year, Japan offered financial support for all children under 18, regardless of income, free college for families with three children, and full pay parental leave. They realize that as their population is aging, there will be a dearth of caregivers and taxpayers to provide for the elderly. I have not read anything about boatloads of immigrants being repulsed on the Japanese islands. Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary has expanded tax benefits to mothers, so that women under age 30 who have a child are exempt from personal income tax for life. China has abandoned its one-child policy. Few politicians in the U.S. have really prioritized this as a critical issue. Business lobbies the government and they do as their financiers wish.

The Waning Fertility Factor

Another big factor in declining replacement rates is declining fertility. Many people now use effective birth control measures to prevent pregnancy, and this has been widespread for decades. The first birth control pill was released in 1960. Large families were no longer the inevitable result of sex. Churches once opposed to contraception now accept it. Sperm counts have been declining for years, and women are having children later in life. STDs can damage a woman’s fallopian tubes, preventing conception or risking tubal pregnancy. These factors contribute to a lower birth rate, and an increase in visits to fertility doctors. Women who become pregnant at a time, or in a circumstance when they feel overwhelmed with the reality of raising a child, frequently abort the unborn baby. This contributes to the delay in the age of their first live birth, and to the number of children they are likely to have over their lifetime. Covid home lockdowns produced a short increase in birth rates, but that has returned to the new normal.

Societal factors for declining birth rates include delayed marriage, career pursuits and higher education, economic factors, and lack of support networks for modern parents. Many couples contemplating parenthood don’t have grandparents nearby to help them with the major task of caring for young children. In a March 2020 Atlantic article, David Brooks opined that “this Lone Ranger approach to family has made starting one much harder than it should be.” Another interesting quote is “The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working class and the poor.”

Not a Problem to Some

Whatever you attribute the declining fertility rates to, and whether you see it as a problem, it is undeniable. Some people, such as Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and others think it is just fine. In a 2010 TED talk about methods for reducing the world’s carbon emissions to zero, Gates said that one of the factors pushing carbon emissions to an unsustainable level is population growth. “First, we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” What he meant by all this has been argued, but it seems for sure that vaccines and “reproductive health services” have contributed to his goal of population reduction. “Reproductive health services” is code for abortion, along with contraception, in case this is not understood.

More Religion, More Babies

Another interesting look at this problem of declining populations is an article in Breakpoint, from the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, entitled “The Fertility of the Religious.” What caught my attention was a section about a sociologist, Lyman Stone, who explains that total fertility among Americans who attend religious services weekly has never dropped below replacement for long, and actually increased in recent years. He states “active participation in church or another faith community is strongly correlated with the decision to have more children than their secular neighbors.

Abrahamic religions teach that children are a blessing. To someone who believes the words of Genesis about people being made in God’s image, the infant born seconds ago has inherent value. He or she is precious, apart from any instrumental benefit to parents or society, and deserves to be welcomed and cherished simply for being human.” Another person quoted in this article, Catherine Pakuluk, suggests that “dedicated believers are holding the key – maybe the only key – to reversing the birth dearth. For policymakers rightly concerned with this global challenge, that means being a friend to the faithful is a huge investment in the future.”

So, to end on a positive note: Lack of religious belief plays a large part in the baby dearth, but if you think about which communities have been associated with larger families – Catholics, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, and home schoolers (most of whom are Christian) – the answer to increased human fecundity is all around us.

And that’s a good thing.