Depopulation Growth
Wattenberg, Ben J.
Depopulation Growth Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben J. Wattenberg (Ivan R. Dee, 256 pages, $24.95) Reviewed by Marina Malenic I N A RECENT SURVEY...
...Most striking of all, only two percent of single German women said Marina Malenic is a writer in Washington, D.C...
...Even in secular Europe, such truths must hit home...
...in which the British historian describes a "creeping Islamicization of a decadent Christendom...
...No one knows...
...He cites Niall Ferguson's recent article titled "Eurabia...
...You can't strike against demographic developments like that," he added...
...The implications of the coming population decline are hardly clear-cut...
...One thing we do know is that the funding of public pension systems will likely have to change, and Europe's love affair with a robust welfare state may have to end entirely...
...birthrates are just barely high enough to keep the population stable...
...But what happens when populations contract...
...But while "the West" goes through its Second Demographic Transition, something interesting is also happening with "the Rest...
...Things mustn't get to the stage where German men are scoffed at abroad for being impotent...
...Children are our future," Johannes Singhammer, a member of parliament and father of six, told Bild in June...
...Ben Wattenberg, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has followed demographic issues for many years, notes in his most recent book on the subject Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, that Europe—as well as other parts of the Western world—is going through what some demographers refer to as the Second Demographic Transition...
...But what happens when populations contract...
...As Wattenberg explains, since the advent of modern economics, populations have always grown...
...No one knows...
...Moreover, approximately 36 percent of single women said they opted to remain unattached because it is more fun...
...What remains to be seen is how closely those two variables are linked...
...According to the Population Division's projections, world population will peak at about 9 billion people (Wattenberg believes that number is more likely to be about 8 billion) and then decline, perhaps very quickly and for an extended duration...
...Nearly one half of those satisfied singles said they preferred the absence of a significant other because it was easier to keep their homes neat and clean...
...That growth will be due mainly to immigration, since current U.S...
...He notes that productivity growth can create an excellent standard of living even as populations remain stable...
...60 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2004 BOOKS IN REVIEW they did not enjoy the single life...
...SEPTEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 61 BOOKS IN REV" However, as anyone who has traveled to any part of Europe knows, anti-Mexican attitudes in the United States are quite mild compared to anti-immigrant—and particularly anti-Muslim—sentiment in Europe...
...Pro-natalist policies, which he advocated in his earlier book on population, The Birth Dearth, have barely made a difference, if they have at all, wherever they have been implemented...
...In the next half century or so, Western civilization will become an ever-smaller fraction of total world population," Wattenberg writes...
...Namely, the Less Developed Countries (the nations formerly known as the Third World) are also experiencing dramatically lower fertility rates...
...According to the theory as put forth in the 1980s by two European scholars, changes in fertility and family formation were made possible by a broad cultural change that took place in the 1960s...
...This summer some German politicians urged men to boost birth rates...
...Promoting America's values around the world maybe one of the long-term solutions to the unprecedented upheaval we are seeing, and will continue to see...
...I take it as the American mission to promote the global growth of individual and economic liberty within a democratic context," he writes...
...Based on the Stern survey, however, Singhammer may be chastising the wrong half of the German population...
...The reasons for such xenophobia are complex, but they are at least in part likely the result of another numbers game—some estimates put the proportion of French schoolchildren of Muslim ancestry at a full 25 percent, according to Wattenberg...
...Wattenberg admits that, regardless of where the phenomenon is occurring—and it does seem to be nearly universal at this point—there is very little to be done about falling birth rates...
...As Wattenberg explains, since the advent of modern economics, populations have always grown...
...there are fewer children," the Austrian minister of education and science declared earlier this year...
...Depopulation Growth Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben J. Wattenberg (Ivan R. Dee, 256 pages, $24.95) Reviewed by Marina Malenic I N A RECENT SURVEY conducted for Germany's Stern magazine, over 80 percent of single German women said they were happy not being in a relationship with a man...
...Wattenberg notes that the United States is the only Western country that is not projected to begin losing population by 2050...
...In the last 35 years, the Total Fertility Rate in the LDCs has gone from approximately 6 children per woman to just below 3 in the 2000-2005 time period...
...These factors include: rapid weakening of social control by institutions, secularization, increasing tolerance towards behavior once considered as "deviant" (such as non-marital cohabitation, deliberate childlessness, and homosexuality), and the perfect control of women over their reproductive lives through modern contraception and abortion...
...He adds that population growth and massive economic growth have occurred simultaneously...
...They are also taking full advantage of Western technological developments—often without having to pay the associated research and development costs...
...In Fewer he does, however, advocate one mission for America quite forcefully: promoting democracy around the world...
...csi4...
...For all those environmentalists who worried about a population explosion, it seems that there is a light at the end of the tunnel—but, as Wattenberg warns, "That light could be a train coming at you...
...We are all living longer...
...The theory recognizes many factors underlying the movement toward plummeting birthrates, which are decreasing now to the point that population decline is expected by 2050...
...Never have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, for so long, in so many places, so surprisingly," writes Wattenberg...
...There are many other factors, but all of these can easily be summed up, as Wattenberg notes, in one word: modernity...
...In fact, while Europe is expected to lose (at least) 100 million people, the United States will likely grow by that number...
...Coming amid concern about Europe's alarmingly low birth rate, such attitudes cannot be pleasant music to the ears of the continent's leaders...
...From 1990 to 2000, according to Wattenberg, European population grew very slightly and economic growth was also steady—although not as robust as in prior generations when population was growing markedly...
...Moreover, those countries are becoming wealthier at a faster rate than the West, at least partly due to a demographic dividend—the high birth rates of the last century have resulted in a booming work force for modernizing economies such as India and China...
...The same percentage (not necessarily the same respondents) said the absence of a man meant they didn't have to put up with the television being tuned into sports...
...Indeed, American values may be one of the few 62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2004 constants in what is sure to be a turbulent future, as modernity's Second Demographic Transition transports us all into an unknown, brave new world...
...They have fallen so low, in fact, that a little over two years ago the United Nations Population Division (which Wattenberg refers to as a sort of "census bureau for the world") finally project-ed a worldwide population decline by 2050, with the possibility that it will come even sooner...
...But there is one alternative that the Europeans don't like to talk about: immigration...
...and formerly a producer for Ben Wattenberg's PBS program, "Think Tank...
Vol. 37 • September 2004 • No. 7
