In the late 1960s and early 1970s, demographers predicted that mass startvation would ensue in the coming dcades as the world faced overpopulation.  High birthrates, particularly in poorer countires, would spark this population bomb, as it was called.

Then the world changed.  Birthrates all over the world, particularly in poorer countries, started to decline, some to rates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman, the rate at which the population stabilizes).  Several European nations have birthrates far below replacement levels and this is cause for alarm, as the New York Times reports in a lengthy article on the subject:

According to a paper by Jonathan Grant and Stijn Hoorens of the Rand Europe research group: “Demographers and economists foresee that 30 million Europeans of working age will ‘disappear’ by 2050. At the same time, retirement will be lasting decades as the number of people in their 80s and 90s increases dramatically.” The crisis, they argue, will come from a “triple whammy of increasing demand on the welfare state and health-care systems, with a decline in tax contributions from an ever-smaller work force.” That is to say, there won’t be enough workers to pay for the pensions of all those long-living retirees.

The solvancy of the modern welfare state is premised on population growth.  When the population declines, the numbers start to look grim as it takes greater per capita tax contributions to maintain benefits levels with each passing year.

Ménage à Deux

The attitudes of modernity are partly to blame, but so are gender roles.  Though it may seem that countries with higher rates of women participating in the workforce would susequently suffer from lower birth rates, this is not so.  In countries in which a greater share of housework falls to the women, the fewer children those women have:

women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and child care are less likely to want to have another child than women whose husbands or partners share the load. Put differently, Dutch fathers change more diapers, pick up more kids after soccer practice and clean up the living room more often than Italian fathers; therefore, relative to the population, there are more Dutch babies than Italian babies being born. As Mencarini said, “It’s about how much the man participates in child care.”

Furthermore, countires that have reacted with policies that presume women will want to continue their careers after childbirth tend to have higher birthrates.  Nations such as Sweden, France, and the U.K, subsidize childcare and maternity leave such that having a child does not end a mother’s career.  Even still, the United States provides fewer benefits for childbirth, yet has a birthrate of 2.1, much higher than any European nation.  The answer, some suspect, is that our labor market flexible enough to allow for mothers to return to the workforce.

So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted.”

By this logic, the worst sort of system is one that partly buys into the modern world — expanding educational and employment opportunities for women — but keeps its traditional mind-set. This would seem to define the demographic crisis that Italy, Spain and Greece find themselves in — and, perhaps, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of the world.

It looks as though only the fully modern will inherit the earth.

The Post writes today about accelerated math education curricula in local public schools.  Though algebra is typically considered to be a ninth-grade math subject, many schools particularly in affluent suburbs are teaching the subject to their students in seventh grade.

The idea is not without controversy, of course, as some parents believe their children are being pushed too hard.  While it’s understandable that parents wouldn’t want their 10-year-olds struggling nightly with three-hour homework assignments, this policy shift is what America needs to improve the math performance of American children.  American children typically score well below their counterparts in Japan and Singapore and many other country when it comes to math achievement tests.  Raising expectations for American students will probably raise results, too.

Furthermore, the nation lacks professionals with advanced math skills, thus requiring the import of talent or the export of math-heavy jobs to wherever the talent resides.

Parents in the affluent neighborhoods found out long ago that higher math achievement levels boost a student’s chance for being accepted into the nation’s choice colleges.  Expanding these standards for all children will help poorer children, in particular, remain competitive with their wealthier peers when applying to colleges.

Japan’s population, which peaked three years ago, is now declining and rapidly aging. By failing to reproduce at a sufficient rate, the Japanese economy will face a declining workforce, a massive retired population and minimal economic growth. And you thought the 1990s were bad!

Since the close of World War II, genocide has been confined largely to minority groups in poor countries. What a surprise turn it will be once the disappearance (or significant reduction) of certain ethnic groups will be the consequence of wealthy societies simply dieing off in old age. Is a slow cultural suicide the genocide of the future?

Maybe not. Japan’s birthrate could reverse its death spiral just as the U.S. birthrate ticked up slightly last year. Furthermore, the Japanese government may reverse is longstanding opposition to immigration and allow more foreigners in, thus replenishing the archipelago’s numbers.

All is not lost! Maybe the world will one day see a flying, fusion-powered Toyota.

Lately I’ve noticed several stickers in the Metro asking, “Did your food have a face?” The Peta web address was printed below.

The problem of such appeals is that they strike of utter moral arrogance, assuming that vegetarianism rests proudly on a moral high ground whereas omnivorism does not— no explanation provided. These appeals rarely make convincing moral arguments. They appear to assume that we all think vegetarianism is superior, but due to our laziness we don’t actively ascribe to it.

My first response to the question in the Meteo was to wonder why having a face should matter. Surely the moral rightness of consuming some type of food does not depend on whether the food had a face.

When encountering morally self-assured vegetarians, I like to ask a simple question: what is the difference between plants an animals that is significant enough to justify eating one but not the other?

I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer.