What’s Wrong with the World

I wonder why people even in a system with Social Security don't see all the remaining reasons for having kids and raising them right. Aside from the fact that Social Security can't help with loneliness, there are an awful lot of areas in which good, grown-up kids can help and in which you'd much rather have a family member than a stranger to help you, even if you could afford a stranger to do it. For example, even if elderly parents don't live with children, I would like to have children living near me in my old age to do things like come over if there's a sudden crisis, check in on me and see that I'm all right, help me get to the store and run errands when I get feeble, and be my advocate with the medical profession if I should have to be hospitalized. There's really no substitute for nearby family for such things, and kids who have been raised to be spoiled brats aren't going to do it, or aren't going to do it well and lovingly. I don't know why people don't get that and--insofar as distant incentives do motivate having children--take that into account.

All excellent and well-made points. I'd be curious to hear what you think about two additional elements too.

One is wealth. You/one might also say -- hey, people have -- that as a country gets richer, its inhabitants tend to have fewer kids. So, is it govt safety nets or wealth that really drives the having-fewer-kids tendency? Has anyone tried to sift this out? Can it be sifted out?

The other is crowdedness. Countries can't go on filling up. There's a finite amount of land around. Besides, there's also people's preferences, and maybe they simply don't like crowds. As far as I've been able to tell, most current U.S. citizens don't love-love-love the idea of a U.S. with a population of 500 million, for instance, which'll come soon enough. 500 million was the population of India circa 1970, btw -- and people in 1970 could barely believe India had so many people.

Anyway, even if science enabled you to stack people ten deep all over the country and it was workable, maybe the people inhabiting that country simply want no part of such arrangements. And maybe their having-babies rates reflects that. Maybe a country tends to hit a certain level of wealth and a certain density of population (which I imagine would be different depending on history, weather, population, etc) and people simply stop having so many kids.

Maybe all the above isn't a complete explanation, any more than the existence of govt safety nets is. But is there any reason to think that they play zero role?

"With state-run Social Security, the government has largely assumed this family responsibility. Married couples have a greatly diminished economic incentive to have children, because now they are counting on--and paying for--government-based old age support."

It's good that the neocons are finally coming around on this point, well, at least one of them is. Paleocons have been saying this for about two decades, and Capretta says it as if he just discovered this truth. Jean Raspail, for example, was writing about this in the 1970s. It's not "news," but it is true.

It also seems that a few of them are learning the truth about Iraq and immigration. Still....

Welfare
Paleos: 1
Neocons: 0

War in Iraq:
Paleos: 1
Neocons: 0

Immigration:
Paleos: 1
Neocons: 0

I hate to say it, Mr. Capretta, but we told you so.

From the demographics literature I have seen, there appear to be multiple factors that affect the decision to have less children. Lower infant mortality, higher literacy rates among women, better economic opportunities for women, even media influences like television shows which advertise happy, smaller families. If you combine all of these factors, the fertility rate is almost certain to fall to replacement levels or lower, even in countries with no welfare system.

None of this explains why parents would treat their children as pets or children would abandon their parents, but it provides some alternate reasons why women choose smaller instead of larger families.

Step2: Capretta notes that the results he cites are "after controlling for other variables." Since the potentially confounding variables you cite are exactly those that everybody always brings up, I assume that they are among those which Boldrin, De Nardi & Jones took into account. But Capretta doesn't link to their research, so that's *just* an assumption on my part.

Could someone come up with a system whereby older people would get pension benefits based on the number of children they raised. My wife and I raised 4 kids who are now adults, but are apparently being taxed to provide funds to other elderly people who years ago were going skiing while we were raising our brood--to help support the "high-livers" of yesteryear in their old age.

MB - lovely to see you here.

I'm by no means hell-bent on perpetual population growth. But, on the other hand, I wouldn't favor a policy that undermined traditional familial relationships *just because* it tended to depress population growth.

Paleocon - heh. But I don't think you "hate to say it" at all!

Lydia: "Social Security can't help with loneliness" - "you'd much rather have a family member than a stranger to help you" etc...

What can I say? These are *precisely* the sort of crucial points that somehow seem to vanish without a trace in discussions of public policy.

Just a personal tip of the hat: I love the way you go looking for connections that ought to be obvious, but aren't (at least to me and probably not to most people). I always tend to question Soc. Sec. on the "When did it become the government's business to...etc.?", which is clearly not the most important objection. Yours is: "the collapse of traditional expectations about what family members owe to one another."

Step2 says that "None of this explains why parents would treat their children as pets or children would abandon their parents", but actually it might help. Most of the reasons given (save for Michael's overcrowding worry) seem to center around the ability of money to enhance our independence at the expense of personal obligations. Maybe it's true that in this case the love of it is the root of much evil.

As to the overcrowding, Thomas Sowell wrote in 1984 that "Every human being on the face of the Earth could be housed in the state of Texas in one-story, single-family homes, each with a front and back yard. A family of four would thus have 6,800 square feet -- about the size of a typical middle-class American home with front and back yards." That was with a population of a little over 4 billion. 20-some years later, the Census Bureau projects the world's population for 5/5/07 to 6,593,039,646 (yes, they do this on a daily basis). On earth there are about 47 million square miles of exposed land, not including Antarctica, which means that "every single person on Earth, man woman and child, would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side." That would leave about "26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs." (This takes into account the amount of arable land available.) And that's per person, while in fact most people would live in some kind of family arrangement.

It may be worth worrying about at some point, but I'm not yet.

The thing that sucks about the current social security systems in the West is that their underlying principle is intergenerational transfer of wealth: The old leach off the young.

Why I should pay for old fogeys who could not bother to save for their retirement is beyond me. Remember Boys and Girls that the 50's and 60's were times of full employment and high real wages. My father was a metal worker who was able to provide a decent standard of living and put money aside on one wage: My parents were thrifty. My parents do not need to rely on me as they are financially secure. Still all those old fogeys who blew all their cash when times were good have their hand out now asking for more.

As far as I see it, the major concern about the decline in the birthrate is predicated on the fear of who is going to cough up for social security. I would have thought that the conservative position would be, that one should not want to rely on ones children at all. In fact one should aim to leave something behind for the kids instead of expecting handouts from them.

Why aren't people having children in the West?. I feel that it is because our present culture stresses personal hedonic satisfaction: Children are an impediment to it.

By the way Mr Luse, I agree with Michaeal Blowhard: Do we really want a world where everyone got their 209.000 square feet and a cow? Sure the world has plenty of space but shouldn't some of it be left alone? I reckon it should.

Anyway my 2 cents on the matter. By the way congrats on the new site.

I am going to throw in a sort of possibly "unconservative" comment here to the effect that I personally would rather live in my own home when I'm old rather than with my grown children. I'm not sure that wanting the privacy, freedom, and independence that I enjoy now--everything from the ability to decide what to buy for dinner to the responsibility for the gutters--is such a very bad thing. To me it's one of the nicest parts of being grown up, even with all the "homeowner stuff."

Also, attachment to place is supposed to be a conservative value, and I really love my home, the very bricks of the thing, and my familiar neighborhood. It would be disorienting, sad, and highly unpleasant _now_ to have to move and leave it and I suspect even worse in old age. Assuming that my children are married and that none of them can move in with me (which might bring about understandable tensions in itself), living with them in old age would mean my leaving what is familiar and beloved as a place to live.

Anyway, all of which is just to say that I'm not ready to say we're all a bunch of selfish folk in love with money if we'd rather avoid living with our kids when we're old. But I have to admit that an IRA (or TIAA-CREF,in my case) is a better shot for avoiding that than Social Security!

SP, you can call me Bill, if you wish.

You're right that the 'underlying principle' is corruptive, but I don't think it's only for the reason that 'the old leach [sic] off the young'. It is also that the redistribution of your wealth to another family erodes the sense of obligation within that family.

Sure the world has plenty of space but shouldn't some of it be left alone?

Of course. The figures take that into account. In Africa, for instance, only 28% of arable land is under cultivation. But to use, say, 50% of it would require destroying a lot of jungle. The nice thing about arable land is that a little of it goes a long way. That's why in this country we actually pay some farmers not to grow anything.

Since you acknowledge that there's plenty of space, you're not really with MB, whose surmise was, to coin a phrase, space-based. Thomas Sowell's figures were offered to counter the overpopulationists' panicked cry that we're running out of it. But that world will never exist. There are country folk and city folk and always will be. I just think that Christians ought not to let this argument in the door because it opens another to various evils, like contraception and abortion, implying that God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply is somehow rescindable.

Dear 'unconservative' Lydia,
I don't see anything wrong either with wanting your privacy and independence. But...what if? Even if you have the financial means for it, senility, illness or physical debility might not allow you to sustain it. I think Steve's worry is that the current system encourages your children to use those financial means to install you in a nursing home rather than in their own. (I admit some conditions may admit of no other alternative.)

But back to the original question: why don't we have more children? I assume it's a fairly complex problem, at least in its effects, but I think the "personal hedonic satisfaction" pointed out by SP has a lot to do with it. A society that has the leisure to so distract itself is a society with a lot of money. The fact that you have the opportunity to acquire it transforms into the obligation to make sure you do. Maybe the question becomes: is the pursuit of it reconcilable with a love of children? You'd think having money would make one more amenable to their presence, but in practice it seems to work the other way.

Back when I was a student, I used to travel a lot by Greyhound bus, 'cause I couldn't afford anything else. (Now, of course, I can't afford even that!) And every time (I mean, really - *every time*) I would end up sitting next to some elderly lady who came from G-d knows where and who was heading for G-d knows where, and who would spend half her time showing me pictures of her children and grand-children, and the other half of her time wondering why they didn't seem to care about her anymore.

Experiences like that have their effect.

One of the effects on me was to make me wonder: should it really be a goal of public policy to increase the independence of children from their parents, and vice versa?

In the end, does that make us *happier* people? Does it make us *better* people?

I don't think so.

But that seems to be *precisely* the goal of the great middle class welfare programs, like Social Security and Medicare.

If married parents were, as long as they remained married, legally entitled in retirement to X% of their own childrens' income, I bet you'd see an increase in family size and a reduction in divorce. Not to mention an increase in the number of parents who wanted to see their children productive, as opposed to "following their dreams". I'm not sure that that sort of sociological meddling would be a categorically good thing, but at least it would be my kind of socialogical meddling.

What an interesting post and an interesting area for further thought.

Of course, to add another wrinkle to a fascinating topic that assuredly will receive more attention in coming years, it might well be that a natalist programme of the sort Zippy mentions would have the effects mentioned. But on the other hand, several generations of conservatives who have taught their children to be productive instead of "following their dreams" has given us a culture dominated by the left. The cultural consequences of such a programme might be unpredictable in ways not necessarily favourable to conservatism.

The cultural consequences of such a programme might be unpredictable in ways not necessarily favourable to conservatism.

I agree: probably wouldn't be favorable, I might even go so far as to venture, since it is inherently anti-conservative to view nations as technological outputs of some man-made civilizational process. But interesting (if perhaps a bit self-indulgent) as a thought experiment.

Steyn's thesis has one big problem: the numbers don't match.

A Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.1 is the level needed to maintain a population; it's a bit higher in a 3rd-world country with higher death rates.

Sample TFR's (from the CIA World Factbook):

Mexico 2.35
USA 2.1

Azerbaijan 2.07
Turkey 1.89
Brazil 1.88
Vietnam 1.89
Algeria 1.86
Iran 1.71
Tunisia 1.73
China 1.7

And for comparison:

France 1.98
Norway 1.86

In other words, low fertility is no longer a European phenomenon. About 60% of the world's population now lives in areas with TFR's of less than 2.1 On current trends, it'll be 80% within ten years and the world population will start declining sometime between 2030 and 2050.

I'm not going to recommend Zippy's idea for a number of reasons (but he isn't really recommending it either, just throwing it out there).

But I will toss in this gem of wisdom: It isn't how many kids you have, it's how they get raised. How many (sensitive topic alert) Roman Catholic families have lots of kids and then turn them over to increasingly liberal Catholic schools? How many evangelical families send their kids to public schools?

But I'm afraid that's OT.

That's not a sensitive topic. It's just a plain fact - except maybe for the part about Roman Catholic families having lots of kids. They don't anymore. And I think you de-emphasize its importance too much. Lots of kids - if they are the fruit, and the objects, of love - are a sign of a marriage's spiritual fecundity. The prevalence of small families tells us that something is suppressing it (other factors, like infertility or late marriage, aside).

That's not a sensitive topic. It's just a plain fact...

Yep. And part of WWWtW.

Zippy, those numbers offered by Mr. Stirling, if accurate, are weird. I understand China, with its forced abortion policy, but Turkey, Algeria, Iran? Islamic countries aren't big on contraception and abortion, so I'm wondering how they come out with a lower fertility rate than the U.S. Some variable that hasn't occurred to me?

Those numbers are definitely counterintuitive. On the other hand, Afghanistan is supposed to be one of the most important places in the world for a young boy to wear a locked chastity belt, so life as actually lived doesn't necessarily follow formal religious and ideological alliances in the large. (Think Al Gore's personal carbon budget).

But I don't really have a clue, either whether those numbers are accurate or, if they are, what they mean.

"Zippy, those numbers offered by Mr. Stirling, if accurate, are weird. I understand China, with its forced abortion policy"

-- actually, the 1-child policy is no longer a strong determinant of Chinese birth-rates.

Eg., Hong Kong, where it isn't applied (and never was)now has a TFR of...

... 0.98 children per woman.

Which means that the typical woman in Hong Kong now is as likely as not to have _no_ children.

In Singapore, a largely Chinese city, it's 1.07.

In Taiwan, a Chinese democracy, it's 1.12.

In the mainland cities like Beijing and Shanghai, TFR's are now evidently running around 1 as well, voluntarily.

Effectively, rural Chinese now have very low birth rates and urban Chinese have given up reproducing.

Since China is already over 40% urban and rising fast, this will have interesting long-term consequences.

"but Turkey, Algeria, Iran? Islamic countries aren't big on contraception and abortion, so I'm wondering how they come out with a lower fertility rate than the U.S."

-- Islam does not forbid contraception; it doesn't say anything on the matter, in fact. Some more countries, with religious affiliation:

Sri Lanka 2.05 (Buddhist and Hindu)
Thailand 1.64 (Buddhist)
Argentina 2.13 (Catholic)
S Korea 1.28 (Buddhist/Christian)
Barbados 1.65 (mixed Protestant)
Bahrain 2.57 (mostly Muslim)

The _world_ TFR is now 2.59.

Whatever it is that's driving down birth-rates worldwide, it isn't secularism or the welfare state.

Neither of which is very applicable to, say, Iran -- which, at 1.71, now has a birthrate lower than Ireland, Norway, or Denmark and considerably lower than that of France or the US.

As to Social Security, note that when it was installed back in the 1930's, the average lifespan was precisely 65.

Until fairly recently, people didn't support their grandparents because by the time they were grown up and married, their grandparents were dead and one or both of their parents were either dead or going to die soon.

In pre-industrial England the average age of marriage was around 27 for men and around 26 for women. People who lived long enough to marry usually died in their 50's or 60's. Seventy -- the biblical threescore-and-ten -- was "old".

Which meant that when your oldest son (or daughter) got married, you were in your late 50's and didn't have long to live and your parents had been gone quite a while.

The problem of the elderly is essentially a new one because, while occasional lucky exceptions have always lived into their 80's and 90's, it's now _common_ for people to do so.

Thanks Bill,

I wrote a long and excellent reply to your post the other day but somehow I accidentally lost it. Here I go again

I don’t think that many couples even in days of yore actually sat down and said “Gee lets have a couple more kids to look after us in our retirement”. Poverty was widespread, life expectancy short and there was no guarantee that the kids would be there to look after them. Base on my experience of human nature, I don’t think that most folks are that far sighted in their youth. In fact reliance on the kids always seems a risky proposition. The poorhouse was a place where the elderly would end up. Check out the following site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorhouse

The picture is particularly poignant. Interesting point in that entry is that most of these places disappeared after the Social Security Act was passed. I think that is a good thing.
Australian social security was given a massive boost in 1947 and for the next fifteen years birth rates went up.

In fact in my experience, people on social security tend to have more children rather that less (unfortunately usually to different fathers) sub fertility seems to occur in those who can most afford it. The educated and the affluent are the sub fertile. Adam Smith noted it in his Wealth of Nations and common experience tends to confirm it.

But why the dropping fertility? I will reply in my next post as I have to go and cook dinner.

Hi Bill, finished dinner.

If I had to put an average on the number of kids my average patient would like the answer would be three. Less than that is usually due to economic factors. More than that is usually due to accidents. Every now and then I meet a woman who can’t stop having kids because she likes kids but I must admit that I have never met a child from a large family who wanted a large family.

Now most people have children not out of duty or potential utility but rather because of the pleasure that the children will bring to them. Their motivations are hedonistic. Offspring are seen as a good, albeit an expensive good. Children are valued according to the happiness that they will bring to an individual in totality with the other competing potential forms of happiness. So while most people want children, they also want regular holidays, careers, and personal experiences of all kinds. In fact children can shut the door to other forms of perceived happiness.

I put it to you that the main reason people limit the number of children they have is because they want the perceived good life and they will sacrifice the number of children they have to attain it(to a certain point). Where expectations are high and means are limited there will be a restriction in the number of children. Children are also an investment in time. Loss of free time is more acute the more valuable the quality of the free time. In other words a high standard of living (which gives one very good quality of leisure time) is likely to impede having more children.

Finally people are altruistic. Most people want their children to have good lives. In meritocratic societies, where there is basically competition for privilege, people will invest a greater portion of their limited resources into a child in order to ensure success for the child. Therefore less children per given resources.

Cultures which have high expectations with regard to quality of life while at same time providing limited means through competition of achieving this quality of life are likely to have low birth rates. I put it to you that this is what we are seeing in the world.

In a world which stresses happiness through hedonism, the potential joy of children competes with the potential joys of not having children. Where expectations and the standard of living are high, rising and attainable, the children miss out.

Sorry Bill, A third post

Check out the following

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/CIB/2003-04/04cib01.htm

Fertility rates in Australia during most of the 20th century. What the hell was happening in 1934 with birth rates near the present? Sans contraception, abortion and in many instances knowledge with regard to sex.

In 1961 the pill gets introduced and fertility falls from 3.5 to 3.0 then stabilizes and even goes up a bit! But from 1973 its all down hill. What happened in Australia in 1973? Basically a massive cultural shift to the left occurred in the country with the election of a Labor Government which virtually turned the country around overnight. Fertility is consequence of culture.

I confess I think the bunch of you are making a couple of mistakes ...

* You're assuming it's normal to have bunches of kids, and for populations to grow, and you're then trying to puzzle out what's "suppressing" that normal thang. Why make those assumptions? What if what we're seeing *is* the normal thang? In any case, you certainly haven't proven that what we're seeing isn't the normal thang. If S.M. Stirling's facts are accurate, it seems to me that we'd do best to assume that it is normal. To my mind what needs explaining is "Why are some people convinced that something's 'suppressing' birth rates?"

* Why is no one here considering the possibility that people are deciding to have fewer kids of their own free will? The yak is all about what's *making* people have fewer kids. That seems to me like an insult to people, and (again) evidence that assumptions are being made: namely that people ought to be having more kids. But is there any reason -- any reason at all -- to think that they aren't exercising a good deal of free will?

It seems to be the case, for instance, that once people are making a certain amount of dough that making the next dollar stops seeming that important. In other words, some of the basic economic drives and behaviors are often dramatically affected by hitting a certain income level. There's nothing wrong with this -- as far as anyone can tell, it's just part of what life's like. We need to adjust our thinking to take that into account.

Why wouldn't it be the case that people hit certain levels of prosperity (and perhaps that countries hit certain population levels) and boom, people start wanting to have smaller families?

Incidentally, no one's talking about "overpopulation." The point is - or may be, anyway -- that maybe people are expressing (via birthrates) *preferences* about population levels. Why shouldn't they? And why shouldn't we grant the possibility that that may be part of what they're doing?

Why is no one here considering the possibility that people are deciding to have fewer kids of their own free will?

I am sure they are. My own suspician is that the biggest reason why people make this choice is because sex has been culturally decoupled from reproduction, rather than because people are making any conscious economic calculation. Kids are a lot of work, having them requires generosity, and sex as recreation simply isn't generous in the way fecund sex is generous.

If people had to (that is, were driven by interior moral conviction to) give up sex entirely in order to avoid children, you would definitely see bigger families. So the reduction of sex to recreation is I think the main driver.

But of course everything is interconnected, and usually One Thing Which Explains Everything really doesn't. I think Steve's post contributes any important idea to the discussion, and that more generally by eliminating the selfish reasons for having large families we've made it so that only very personally generous and giving people actually do have large families.

More generally still, repentance and redemption start with imperfect contrition before moving on to perfect contrition**. That is, we are often motivated by selfishness before we grow up enough to be motivated by generosity.

[**] - (Forgive the Catholic reference: in Catholic moral theology imperfect contrition is when you repent out of the fear of Hell or desire for Heaven, i.e. for selfish reasons; perfect contrition is when you repent out of the love of God and neighbor, i.e. for generous reasons).

I want to throw in here quickly that the Population Research Institute has documented many, many forms of force and arm-twisting that go on in third-world countries in both hemispheres to drive down birthrates among poor women. So while in countries with no such population-suppression programs I'm quite willing to believe that people have fewer children voluntarily, I _know_ that there are countries where this really is being imposed. Nor am I talking only about China with forced abortions and IUD insertion. PRI has documented health workers badgering women in South American countries to have IUD's inserted (coming to their homes repeatedly), doctors in such countries putting papers "consenting" to tubal ligations in front of women in labor needing a C-section and saying, "Sign this," doctors refusing to sign a woman's form documenting childbirth so she can get maternity leave until the woman agrees to a tubal ligation, and so forth. In some countries in South America and Africa they have found cases of women being threatened with a cut-off of health care (government controlled or controlled by foreign aid groups) for their born children unless they agree to tubal ligation. There's nasty stuff that _does_ go on that _is_ a matter of suppressing birth rates in an external fashion. Oh, and let's not forget this one: In some African countries doctors get paid much better if they specialize in "family planning"--i.e. population control--because those programs are foreign funded. This has skewed the entire health care sector in these countries in bizarre ways towards birth control of all kinds and away from basic care. So-called "hospitals" have been found without rubber gloves and antibiotics but with just store rooms full of condoms. Desperately needed clean operating rooms are sometimes reserved for tubal ligations and vasectomies. It's a mess. And this in countries where infant mortality is still a serious problem.

It's worth considering what impact these sorts of things might be having on some of the TFR's in question. I'm pretty sure they are relevant to Mexico, though I don't know about Thailand (for example).

(1) Mr. Stirling is cherry-picking the data like crazy. The CIA World Factbook's TFR ranking (to which, unsurprisingly, he does not link, even though he cites it) is available here.

Please do click on the link, scroll through the numbers, and judge for yourself whether Mr. Stirling is even *trying* to be straight with you.

(2) I've now found an online copy of the main study on which Mr. Capretta relies, which also, conveniently, cites much of the (rather extensive) previous literature on this interesting topic. It is available here.

Again, please do click on the link - but, be warned: (1) this is a PDF file, and (2) there's a lot of math.

As I expected, the authors have considered all the obvious potentially confounding variables. They are, after all, professionals.

(3) Oh, and by the way - the idea that the statistics for Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Taiwan - three of the most singular places in the world - have anything whatsoever to tell us about China as a whole is beyond absurd.

Yes, the statement that China's 1-child policy is not a significant determinant of its fertility rate also strikes me as highly implausible, and absurd to the extent that it is supported using data from Hong Kong. Women in China are indeed _required_ to have IUD's inserted after their permitted number of children and required to have abortions for unlicensed births. These latter may even include first children when, for example, the woman is younger than the permitted childbearing age or when she is unmarried. Mr. Stirling seems to be asking us to believe that the women who act in accordance with the laws in China really are doing so almost entirely voluntarily and that those who are unwilling are statistical outliers whose different behavior, were the one-child policy abolished, would make little statistical difference. Considering the draconian nature of the policies and the ways that they are monitored and enforced, this seems implausible on its face. The Chinese government itself obviously doesn't think that its population control goals would be met if it revoked its policies. It uses propaganda to say that the programs are "voluntary," but that this claim is balderdash has been amply documented.

S M Stirling wrote:

'As to Social Security, note that when it was installed back in the 1930's, the average lifespan was precisely 65.'

But is not this statistic misleading? The 1930s lifespan of a (by today's standard) short 65 figured in drastically higher infant and childhood mortality, no? The concept of an average lifespan of 65 conjures images of 75-year-olds being a rarity, or (as Stirling puts it) being an unusual or short-lived burden on their adult children.

In fact, what I suspect the data would show is plenty of children dying of polio or influenza or what have you, with a relatively-high number of headstones with birth and death dates within 5 years of each other, driving the averages much more strongly than Stirling's assumed massive post-65 die-off. A society in which two out of three people died of childhood illness before turning one month old, and every single person who survived lived to 100 years, would have a mean life expectancy in the neighbourhood of 33 years. It would be wrong to infer from that that there were very few 80-year-olds in that society, or that people would regard human life as something that lasted only 33 years, or that one could expect members of that society to be focussing on end-of-life issues and heavily planning their estates at age 32. Two out of three of your colleagues from the maternity ward might not have made it out, but that does not mean that you could practically rule out having to take care of your 90-year-old parents in that hypothetical society. To the contrary, approximately every second person in the category of those who made it to toddling age would be over 50, even in a society in which the life expectancy at birth was 33.

MB - I can only speak for myself, of course. But I don't think that I'm assuming *anything* about what's "normal."

The *empirical* claim in question here is just that programs like Social Security tend to depress fertility rates - which is, obviously, very inconvenient for the long-term solvency of such programs.

The *moral* claim (well, *my* moral claim, anyway) - is that such programs *also* tend to undermine traditional notions about what children owe to their parents, and what parents owe to their children. And not only do I not think that's a good thing, but, well...

...I can hardly think of a worse thing.

Thanks for digging, Steve. Those numbers do change the picture considerably, although some still confound, such as the 'Catholic' outposts of Poland and Slovenia sporting disgraceful fertility rates. My instincts about most Muslim countries were, I think, basically sound with Afghanistan coming in near the top with 6.64 children born per woman. This leaves Iran and Qatar hard to explain, but next to the African countries, these places are industrialized giants of prosperity, and prosperity seems to be a common theme in low TFR's. I also haven't been able to figure out where abortion numbers fit into all this. But I find Mr. Stirling's contention that "the 1-child policy is no longer a strong determinant of Chinese birth-rates" to be absurd. Neither can I abide his assertion that "Whatever it is that's driving down birth-rates worldwide, it isn't secularism or the welfare state," since, in this country, the welfare state has had a history of driving up birthrates among its most distressed recipients, and because secularism's moral anomie regarding sexual behavior has certainly had no difficulty embracing contraception and abortion as adjuncts to sexual liberty. There is certainly something to his noting that "the problem of the elderly is essentially a new one," but noting it doesn't get us any closer to answering the question raised in Steve's post.

I don't think I have any essential quarrel with SP (though there's so much to read here I'm doing it quickly), except that he might have misspoken when he says, "In fact in my experience, people on social security tend to have more children rather that less", when he might have meant 'welfare' rather than social security. If he did mean the latter, I can only point out that the study Steve points us to comes to precisely the opposite conclusion.

My apologies to Michael B., who protests that "no one's talking about overpopulation," for when he said that "Countries can't go on filling up - There's a finite amount of land around", I had assumed that that's exactly what he was talking about.

Further, people certainly do have smaller families of their own free will, but the question we're asking is whether this is a good thing, an answer to which his praise of autonomy does not provide us.

Naturally, my sympathies lie heavily with Zippy and SP, for when people, in whatever area of the world, desire smaller families, that desire alone in not enough. They must also have the means, and if those means are primarily contraception and abortion (available, sometimes coercively, in even the poorest places, as Lydia reminds us) rather than a love of continence, then it is not unreasonable to ask if those means, and the end toward which they are directed, are in fact good. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, the poor continue to out-reproduce the prosperous. It's not pleasant to suppose that prosperity and decadence must always keep company, but they seem to have a hard time keeping their hands off each other.

Hi Bill,

You read me correctly, over her in Australia we tend to use the term social security payment instead of welfare. I'm usually mindful of U.S terminology; that one slipped through.

I'm not sure if having small families is a good thing but then again I'm not sure if having large families is a good thing either. I don't think that I have ever met a person who came from a family of six or more children who wanted to have more that two; and I meet an awful lot of people.

Contraception does not prevent children from being born, rather it prevents unwanted conception. There is nothing from stopping a family from having 12 kids and then deciding to use contraceptives. If every family wanted to have four kids and then start using contraceptives there would be no decline or aging of the population. Contraception prevents the conception of kids you don't want, not the conception of the kids you do. The issue as I see it is; what are the factors that determine family size?

I don't think that I have ever met a person who came from a family of six or more children who wanted to have more that two; ...

I know a number of second-generation large families. Perhaps the difference is geographic/cultural.

Contraception prevents the conception of kids you don't want, not the conception of the kids you do.

I assume you are referring to non-abortaficient contraception (e.g. not the Pill).

Continence does that as well, with the added benefit of not turning sex into a recreational activity with no consequences.

First, I don't think per se that the trend Steve is noticing has necessarily to do with the difference between NFP and artificial contraception, _unless_ we assume that NFP allows more unintended pregnancies, which its advocates usually argue it does not do if used correctly and carefully. It would in principle be possible for people to have the noted TFR's which create problems for the long-term solvency of old-age Social Security programs by using NFP as well as artificial contraception, and we would still be asking ourselves whether this was in part a result of a perverse incentive effect of Social Security. Similarly, we might have similar problems of disconnection between the generations regardless of the form of family planning used to result in small families.

Of course, we know that artificial contraception is in fact a big factor in the countries with these low TFR's, but I still tend to think that is a separate question from that of kids who aren't prepared to care for their parents in old age. I suppose one could argue a very general connection in terms of an overall less loving, careful, and responsible society, but that seems rather indirect.

Second, I want to emphasize again to SP that the genuinely coerced or arm-twisted use of contraception is far more widespread in countries that receive foreign aid than many seem to realize. I have to admit that those poorer countries may not have solvent Social Security systems for old age (though Mexico does have a Social Security system), so the two problems--forced contraception and a greying population in countries with SS systems--may not overlap. But statements like "contraception prevents...unwanted conception" just do seem too sweeping when it is known that there are many places where it is pushed onto people and prevents wanted conception. Speaking as a Protestant, I have to say that here a Pope was prescient, but I can't recall which one. Didn't one of the popes writing against artificial contraception make the argument that it would be used by governments to force people to have fewer children?

Finally, this does give rise to the interesting questions: Why are governments in these countries that do treat their people in this way so short-sighted? Can they not see what is going to happen with elderly people with no one to care for them? Or are they just planning--and this may be literally true, in the case of dictatorships like China--to bump off the old people in the long run anyway?

It would in principle be possible for people to have the noted TFR's which create problems for the long-term solvency of old-age Social Security programs by using NFP as well as artificial contraception, and we would still be asking ourselves whether this was in part a result of a perverse incentive effect of Social Security.

Oh, I agree. My view of NFP is not the standard-issue triumphalist neo-Catholic view.

Speaking as a Protestant, I have to say that here a Pope was prescient, but I can't recall which one. Didn't one of the popes writing against artificial contraception make the argument that it would be used by governments to force people to have fewer children?

That would be Pope Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae Vitae:

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.

Note that birth-rates in France began declining in the 1830's and had reached (roughly) replacement level by the 1880's.

In that case, in a predominantly Catholic and in fact still predominantly peasant country, long before any modern birth-control methods were available, the motivation seems to have been partible inheritance -- people didn't want to divide their property among many heirs.

The methods adopted seem to have been coitus interruptus and sheer reductions in the frequency of marital intercourse.

The same methods were the cause of the initial large fall in British fertility from the 1870's on -- from an average of over 5 children to an average of less than 3 by 1914.

Even condoms didn't become common until after 1918.

"1) Mr. Stirling is cherry-picking the data like crazy. The CIA World Factbook's TFR ranking (to which, unsurprisingly, he does not link, even though he cites it) is available here."

-- yeah, and it supports my point. Low fertility is not a product of Western welfare states, unless you count Taiwan and Thailand and Tunisia and Iran and Burma(!) as "Western" and "welfare states". They all have sub-replacement fertility.

"(3) Oh, and by the way - the idea that the statistics for Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Taiwan - three of the most singular places in the world - have anything whatsoever to tell us about China as a whole is beyond absurd."

-- uhh... I quoted them because they're all _Chinese_.

People who've immigrated from China in the US also have sub-replacement fertility levels.

BTW, making personal slurs on people who disagree with you is generally considered a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.

"Yes, the statement that China's 1-child policy is not a significant determinant of its fertility rate also strikes me as highly implausible"

-- the policy was probably significant in driving Chinese fertility rates down in the 1980's faster than it would otherwise have happened, particularly in rural areas.

What I'm saying is that it probably isn't demographically significant _now_, in 2007. China's TFR wouldn't rise much if the government simply abolished it tomorrow, and after a momentary blip the overall trend would continue down, down, down.

The reason for believing this is so is quite simple: Chinese populations _not_ subject to the 1-child policy have similar TFR's to mainland China... and in fact often have _lower_ TFR's.

Taiwan, which is essentially a Chinese province with a democratic government, has a TFR of 1.12 -- as compared to mainland China's 1.7.

Now, Taiwan differs from mainland China basically only in that it's rather more advanced economically. Birth-control there is entirely voluntary.

If this isn't an indication that Han populations as a whole have gone over to a low-fertility model, why isn't it?

The Chinese government was pushing on an unlocked door.

The 1-child policy is an atrocious violation of individual rights; it's also probably not demographically significant as of 2007. The two parts of that sentence are not incompatible.

"and absurd to the extent that it is supported using data from Hong Kong."

-- no, it isn't.

a) Hong Kong already had very low TFR's while it was a British colony prior to 1997, and

b) the 1-child policy is not applied in Hong Kong now that it's part of the PRC.

"Mr. Stirling seems to be asking us to believe that the women who act in accordance with the laws in China really are doing so almost entirely voluntarily and that those who are unwilling are statistical outliers whose different behavior, were the one-child policy abolished, would make little statistical difference."

-- yup. That seems to be what the evidence indicates.

If it isn't so, why don't Chinese women who are _not_ subject to the 1-child policy have more children?

"The Chinese government itself obviously doesn't think that its population control goals would be met if it revoked its policies."

-- actually, the Chinese government does all sorts of weird, counterproductive things and then lies about them.

I think economics make a big difference to birth rates. It's generally acknowledged that more prosperous people tend to have fewer children. Since you acknowledge that there is a notable economic difference between mainland China and the other countries you mention (Taiwan and Hong Kong), it is not plausible that the behavior of women there is indicative of what the behavior of women in mainland China would be were the 1-child policy revoked.

Mr. Stirling:

Was it a "personal slur" to say that you were "cherry-picking the data like crazy?" No. It was the simple truth.

The "Western" countries you cite (The USA, France, Norway) are all *high* outliers. The non-"Western" countries you cite "for comparison" are all *low* outliers.

If that's not "cherry-picking the data like crazy," then I simply can't imagine what would be.

Perhaps you just don't understand the phrase.

But let me offer you a chance to redeem yourself. Simple question: *are* Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan (to say nothing of Chinese immigrants to the US!) reasonably comparable to the People's Republic of China, considered as a whole, or are they not?

Mr. Stirling, again:

sorry, but I composed my last comment before reading your last couple of messages - from which I gather that you *do* think that the small, highly Westernized and wealthy enclaves of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan *are* reasonably comparable to big, largely poor, largely rural China today.

Amazing.

Hi Zippy,

It is quite possible that I'm a statistical anomaly-in that I have not met anyone from a large family who wants a large family-but I reckon I must have had dealings with more than twenty thousand people so far in my career and I must be pretty unlucky not to have met anyone like that. Still it is quite possible and I concede your point.

The point is that people are choosing to have smaller families and I don't think the expectation of social security is a factor.

I don't want to get into a discussion about the morality of contraception except to state that contraception prevents unwanted conceptions: Not wanted ones. There is nothing to stop you having six children and then using contraception. The whole argument, that contraception is a massive depressant of fertility is premised on the idea that a lot of the fecundity in the past was unintended, something btw which I am not really convinced about.

Lydia, I totally agree with you. The forced use of contraceptives onto people unwilling is a monstrous abuse of their rights of which I am totally appalled and I agree that there may a depression in the TFR in these countries as a result of it. Unscrupulous governments will use any technology they can to enforce government social objectives. Still this mechanism does not explain the fall in TFRs in most western countries where contraception is not coerced.

Still the point is that people are choosing to have smaller families and I don't think that the expectation of social security is the answer.

Hi Zippy

The line

"The point is that people are choosing to have smaller families and I don't think the expectation of social security is a factor."

was not meant to be there.

"But is not this statistic misleading? The 1930s lifespan of a (by today's standard) short 65 figured in drastically higher infant and childhood mortality, no?"

-- nope. The transition from the traditional to the modern mortality pattern was uneven. Mortality fell first among those between their 20's and their 60's, then among infants, and then among the 'quite old'.

Innoculation, simple antisepsis, clean water and better hygene, with more abundant and cleaner food, were the big factors in reducing infant and childhood mortality. They decreased mortality at all ages, of course, but disproportionately so among the very young.

The decrease in mortality in the sixth and seventh decade of life came considerably later.

By the mid-1930's infant mortality rates were already quite low in the developed world; they'd started falling sharply in the 1890's and it accelerated after WWI. Higher than now, but very much lower than the pre-1900 norm.

The _median_ age of death for people who lived to 20 was higher than 65, but not all that much IIRC (working from memory here).

There's a reason why the Bible listed "threescore and ten" as the "life of man". After that, degenerative diseases become important and your immune system starts to get wonky -- hence the "old man's friend" nickname for pneumonia, which carried old people off quickly.

Most of the post-1945 improvement in mortality has been an increase of the number of people who live to be "quite old" by traditional standards, that is, 70's and over.

On an anecdotal level, I'm 53, the youngest of 4 children.

Two of my grandparents were dead by the time my father married in 1942; another died before I was born. They died in their 40's-60's. One lived into her 70's and died when I was in my early teens, after living for a while with her daughters.

That was fairly typical. OTOH, my mother lived to be 76, and my father's 90 and going strong. I can expect, statistically speaking, to live another 40-50 years given a continuation of present trends.

"The *empirical* claim in question here is just that programs like Social Security tend to depress fertility rates - which is, obviously, very inconvenient for the long-term solvency of such programs."

-- since similar drops in fertility have occurred in both countries _with_ and _without_ such programs, it's apparent that this cannot be the explanation.

Burma has, in practice, no equivalent of Social Security. Burma now has a low birthrate. Therefore welfare cannot be the cause of the decline.

Post hoc propter ergo hoc. Social Security preceeded the decline in fertility, but cannot have caused it -- unless countries all over the world are undergoing a reduction in fertility _without_ a common cause.

"I think economics make a big difference to birth rates. It's generally acknowledged that more prosperous people tend to have fewer children."

-- this is probably due to the fact that more prosperous people are exposed to social trends first. The lower classes follow along eventually.

Traditionally -- before the mid-18th century, roughly -- prosperous people in the West had _more_ children than the poor.

Under the traditional West European demographic system, wealth was inversely proportional to age at marriage, which was the predominant factor in total fertility.

Rich people married young -- in their teens, for women -- middling people married in their mid-20's, and very poor people married late if at all.

In 17th century England, for example, as many as 25% of some generations never married.

Essentially, you couldn't get married unless you had your own "hearth" -- enough economic resources to set up your own household, by owning or renting a farm, having been through an apprenticeship in a craft, etc. This required, on average, about a decade of working as an apprentice or "servant" of some sort.

Most people left the home in their teens and then married about a decade later.

People in the American colonies married younger because land was cheap and abundant.

"My instincts about most Muslim countries were, I think, basically sound with Afghanistan coming in near the top with 6.64 children born per woman."

-- nope. Take the rank orders of the top 15:

1 Mali 7.38 Muslim
2 Niger 7.37 Muslim
3 Uganda 6.84 Christian
4 Somalia 6.68 Muslim
5 Afghanistan 6.64 Muslim
6 Yemen 6.49 Muslim
7 Burundi 6.48 Christian
8 Burkina Faso 6.41 Muslim/animist/Christian
9 Congo 6.37 Christian/animist
10 Angola 6.27 Christian/animist
11 Sierra Leone 6.01 Muslim/Christian/animist
12 Congo 5.99 Christian/animist
13 Liberia 5.94 Christian/animist/Muslim
14 Mauritania 5.78 Muslim
15 Guinea 5.75 Muslim
16 Malawi 5.74 Christian

-- as you can see, the determining factor is not religion; overwhelmingly Christian Uganda and Burundi have higher TFR's than completely Muslim Afghanistan or or Mauritania.

The determining factor is _backwardness_.

"Was it a "personal slur" to say that you were "cherry-picking the data like crazy?" No. It was the simple truth."

-- no, it was a personal slur to state that I was attempting to deceive.

You can say I'm wrong. You can't call me a liar and expect anything but a flamewar.

So retract and apologize, like a man of honor.

The whole argument, that contraception is a massive depressant of fertility is premised on the idea that a lot of the fecundity in the past was unintended, something btw which I am not really convinced about.

The assumption here seems to be that the primary mode of thought about children in the past was "intended/unintended": that people planned their children the way we plan the output of an assembly line. That in itself strikes me as a modern conceit.

But it is also off-topic, because at issue isn't whether welfare-state social security would have depressed fertility in (say) the middle ages; it is whether social security is a factor in depressing fertility now.

"The assumption here seems to be that the primary mode of thought about children in the past was "intended/unintended":"

-- People have been planning how many children they wanted for a long, long time, at least in the West. Mainly because they were anxious as to how they would provide for them.

They just did it by different means in the old days; principally by regulating the age they married, and secondarily by things like prolonged breast-feeding, which everyone knew depressed fertility.

A woman's fertility reaches its peak in the late teens and early twenties, then drops off, slowly at first and then more and more quickly -- after about 35, infertility becomes common, as many who 'delayed' childbearing are finding now to their dismay.

The "window" was narrower in the old days, as puberty came later and menopause earlier.

Traditionally, women in the West married in their mid-20's, a good decade after puberty and well after the period of highest fertility. Few married before 20; many after 30.

When times were good they married a bit earlier and fewer never married; when times were hard, the age of marriage went up and more never married, up to 25% in some periods.

The huge upswing in population growth in Britain after 1750, for example, can be entirely explained by a 3-year decline in the average age at marriage and a halving or more in the percentage never marrying. The early stages of the Industrial Revolution made it easier to get an independent livelihood.

So Islamic countries don't have "enviable fertility". Steyn's notion that Tunisians in France will somehow breed like rabbits while those in Tunisia are breeding like Danes is... ah... "silly" is the operative phrase.

Muslims have pretty much the same fertility as Christians or Hindus or Buddhists with similar levels of social development and exposure to the world economy and world media.

Eg., Mexico has a TFR of 2.39 and a literacy rate of about 92%.

Indonesia, the largest single Muslim country, has a TFR of 2.38, and a literacy rate of about 87%.

Brazil has a TFR of 1.88 and a literacy rate of 86%.

Algeria has a TFR of 1.86 and a literacy rate of around 78%.

Afghanistan, by way of contrast, has a TFR of 6.64 and a literacy rate of about 31%, and lower for women; Burundi has a TFR of 6.48 and a literacy rate of about 50%.

There, and not in their (Muslim and Christian, respectively) religions, you have the explanation for the high birth-rate.

(That and the wars against the Russians and the civil wars and then the Taliban keeping the Afghans isolated from the world.)

The _big_ Muslim countries _already_ have low-to-moderate TFR's, surprisingly low given their overall level of economic development.

Turkey 1.89, Algeria 1.86, Iran 1.71, Egypt 2.77, Syria 3.31, Pakistan 3.71, Bangladesh 3.09, Indonesia 2.38 -- and between them those have well over half the Muslims in the world.

And these are all _falling rapidly_, including the ones already below replacement level.

Pakistan was at 4.5 as recently as 2002, for example -- that's a drop of 0.8 of a child