Underpopulation Sucking Europe to Nothing

Europe's largest, most pressing problem for the next century is underpopulation. Europe is an emasculated continent unable to stand up to Serbia, much less Russia. But unless European women start having babies soon, Europe is likely to be conquered by a ragtag, high-breeding group of third world illiterates and untrainables. European welfare systems are quite generous, but if they are not funded by productive workers' wages and corporate profits, Europe may become the next Darfur or Gaza.

The magic figure for demographers is 2.1 births per couple. That, allowing for the fact that some girls die before they reach child-bearing age, is the figure at which a population replaces itself. In Europe the last time that fertility was above replacement level was in the mid-1960s. But now, for the first time on record, birthrates in southern and eastern Europe have dropped below 1.3 – well below the 1.5 which the United Nations has marked as the crisis point. If things continue the population there will be cut in half in just 45 years. In Italy, one recent survey put it at 1.2. Cities such as Milan and Bologna recorded less than 1, the lowest birthrates anywhere.

Things are as bleak in Japan. There the total fertility rate declined by nearly a third between 1975 and 2001, from 1.91 to 1.33. The average family size has remained the same, but there are fewer families. Half of Japanese women have not married by the age of 30, and 20 per cent of them are not marrying ever.

But it is not just the developed world. The birthrate is plummeting in east Asia, too, in countries which were, until three decades ago, considered poor. Overall in Asia the fertility rate fell from 2.4 in 1970 to 1.5 today. China's rate is down from 6.06 to 1.8 and declining. Thailand is now 1.5. Singapore, Taiwan and Burma are similar. The lowest is South Korea with only 1.1 children per couple.

"South East Asia has plummeted to levels it took Europe 150 years to reach in just 30 years," says Dr Jane Falkingham, Professor of Demography and International Social Policy at the University of Southampton. Alarmed by this extremely low fertility, South Korea has slashed government spending on birth control. Singapore is now offering tax rebates to couples with more than two children. Japan is piling money into nurseries and childcare.

...Populations may be expected to shrink in Italy, Spain, Greece and Germany (which is losing 100,000 people a year) and decline even more rapidly further east in Russia, Romania and Bulgaria, which is set to plunge by almost half....Childlessness is now a fashionable lifestyle choice, as it is in Germany where 27.8 per cent of women born in 1960 are childless, far more than any other European country.... _Independent

Russia is losing half its population every 40 years or so. Spain, Italy, and Greece are almost as bad. Who will defend Russia's vast empire when there are not enough young men to field an army? Who will work to pay for Europe's generous welfare benefits to the voluntarily unemployed, and to polygamous emigrants with many wives and children?

It has always been the way of the proliferating tribe to push the non-proliferating tribes out of the best land. History has not been canceled in that regard. Europe's tribes from Russia to Spain to Sweden to the UK are due to be displaced and forgotten. Uneducated, quasi-untrainables from the third world who have not forgotten how to procreate will take their places.

The singularity is not the answer, unless you enjoy living in an empty fantasy. Migrating to Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the US will only speed the overrunning of those you leave behind. Besides, the same basic underlying dynamic is at work in all of the developed countries, just running at different rates.

The first step would be waking up.

Further reading:

The Global Baby Bust
Europe's Baby Bust
America Alone (Google Books excerpt)
America Alone (Amazon page)
A Return to Pastoral Europe?
Birth of an Empire
Fiscal Policy and Fertility in the US
Transition of Europe and Japan to labour shortage economies
Fascinating Philip Longman PDF presentation on depopulation
Russian plans to reverse population decline
No Easy Answers