Demography

After giving birth to her first child in August of last year, 24-year-old Autumn Oliver-Giasson has decided to hold off on having more children until the high cost of living in Canada eases.

“It’s just not plausible. It doesn’t make sense,” she told Global News from McQuade, N.B.

My Mom was for the most part a stay at home housewife, though she did do “sewing” for a small clientele. Later she did work both full and part time as a seamstress doing alterations for clothing stores and dry cleaners for about 4 or 5 years.

Stay at home Mom’s were common during my childhood, my parents managed to raise 7 kids on a working class salary.

No we were not well off but no one starved despite occasional hard times.

“Where are all the children?” My three-year-old recently asked this after we arrived at the park. Fair question, kid. All too often the swings hang empty, pot shops have replaced ice cream parlours and stores are void of little feet. Though low fertility gained some attention during COVID, when fertility fell even further, we mostly avoid the topic or assume the long-term decline is a good thing.

The new push for more babies: How tech elites think it will save the planet

Soon after China reported that it saw more deaths than births last year, its first population dip in 60 years, Elon Musk, father of 10, again sounded the “population collapse” alarm, tweeting that a decline in birth rates globally heralds an “existential problem to humanity, not overpopulation!”

FOR the first time since records began in 1845, most children are now born outside marriage, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. In England and Wales, 51.3 per cent of 624,828 live births in 2021 were to women not married or in a civil partnership, while 48.7 per cent of babies were born in wedlock. 

At the beginning of the 20^th century, 96 per cent of births were within marriage, but this fell to 80 per cent in 1985, 70 per cent in 1991 and 60 per cent in 2001.

Although Mark Steyn writes knowledgeably about a great many topics, he keeps returning to what he calls the biggest story of our time—the planet’s demographic death spiral.

The decline in population is a global phenomenon, but it’s happening faster in the West and in Japan. For a description of where it all ends, Steyn recommends P.D. James dystopian novel, The Children of Men.

Also … PM Meloni Meets With Pope To Discuss Demographic Crisis and Pro-Natalist Campaign

This week, for the first time since assuming high office in October, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Pope Francis to discuss several pressing topics facing Italy, namely its severe demographic crisis and how to solve it.

“Only 3% of 18-24 year olds identify as Anglicans, and only 5% as Catholics.”

Mass migration and the collapse of religion among the young have transformed Europe. And it’s transforming America at a slower rate.

Unlike interest rates or the weather, long-run demographic trends are highly predictable. Today, we are facing a demographic storm that will have far-reaching impacts on the economy and geopolitics.

But automation! Hasn’t Canada been a productivity laggard by choice of the corporate class? They must be missing their slaves.

Fewer babies will be born in all of Europe than in Nigeria alone.

In Europe, “at the rate at which things are going, the population will have halved before 2070, with the continent at risk of losing 400 million inhabitants by 2100,” noted James Pomeroy, an economist at China’s HSBC bank.

The growth of the world population has already reached its lowest rate since 1950 and Europe’s population will continue to contract until the end of the century, noted the Financial Times, citing the United Nations World Population Prospects report.

A collateral question is: where?

When I was a kid, everyone was worried about the “population explosion.” Paul Ehrlich’s book, “The Population Bomb,” was a runaway bestseller.

This led to a lot of dystopian science fiction, like Harry Harrison’s novel, “Make Room, Make Room,” which became the famous movie “Soylent Green.” It also led to a lot of policy changes, from China’s disastrous one-child policy to many policies in industrialized nations aimed at people having fewer children later in life.