Mark Steyn has been on record for years pointing to demographics and birth rates as the primary issue facing civilization. In his column today, he revisits the issue, quoting liberally from his 2006 book America Alone. Mr. Steyn begins:
Happy
Whit Monday to my Commonwealth cousins throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific,
and to our readers in much of Continental Europe. And of course to my fellow
Canadians a happy if locked down Victoria Day. Enjoy it while you can.
Front
page news from yesterday's New York Times:
World
Is Facing First Long Slide in Its Population
Me
in my international bestseller fifteen years
ago:
The
single most important fact about the early 21st century is the rapid aging of
almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe and
Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been
and faster than any has ever aged... These countries – or, more precisely,
these people – are going out of business.
The
Times front page yesterday:
All
over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility
bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday
parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.
Me
in 2006:
The
salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out
of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic
evolutions in history... This isn't a projection: It's happening now. There's
no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for
fun, here goes: By 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no
sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa
pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of
grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the
dinosaurs. As Noël Coward remarked in another context, 'Funiculì, funiculà,
funic yourself.'
The
Times yesterday:
Maternity
wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in
northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can't find enough students, and
in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land
turned into parks.
Me
fifteen years ago:
[In
Japan] the shortage of children has led to a shortage of obstetricians...
[China's]
population will get old before it's got rich...
The
'experts' of the western world are slower to turn around than an ocean liner,
and in Europe they were still yakking about the 'population explosion' even as
their 1970s schoolhouses, built in anticipation of traditional Catholic
birthrates, were emptying through the Nineties and Oughts...
One
can talk airily about being flushed down the toilet of history, but even that's
easier said than done. In eastern Germany, rural communities are dying, and one
consequence is that village sewer systems are having a tough time adjusting to
the lack of use. Populations have fallen so dramatically there are too few
people flushing to keep the flow of waste moving...
The
Times yesterday:
The
strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more
retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion
that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old.
It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire
regions where everyone is 70 or older...
Me
a decade-and-a-half ago:
Speaking
for myself... I'd rather date Debbie Reynolds than Angelina Jolie. But even to
put it in those terms is to become aware of how our assumptions about a
society's health – about its innovative and creative energies - are based on
its youthfulness. Picture the difference between a small northern mill town
where the mill's closed down and the young people have moved away and a growing
community in the Sun Belt. Which has the bigger range of stores and
restaurants, more work opportunities, better school choice? Which problem would
you rather have - managing growth or managing decline..?
In
theory, those countries will find their population halving every thirty-five
years or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters
figure there's no point sticking around a country that's turned into an
undertaker's waiting room. Not every pimply burger flipper wants to support
entire old folks' homes single-handed...
Everything
The New York Times finally got around to yesterday, I said in 2006. My
book was an international bestseller, including on the Times' own Top
Ten list. Yet it did not bother reviewing America Alone. . .
Read the rest here.
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