The fading of the West
What do appeals to national duty, days off for love-making and monetary incentives have in common?
April 2, 2008
Yolanda Kornelsen
Apparently Thomas Malthus was wrong: population growth will not be the end of our planet. In fact, if you look at Canada’s latest demographic census, our biggest danger is dying out completely. Many other Western countries are also finding themselves fading in numbers, especially compared to the rapidly growing populations to the East.
For a stable population to be maintained (no growth, no decline), you need a total fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman. Canada has reached an all time low of 1.48. While lower than the U.S. (2.1), is slightly more reproductive than most European countries, which on average are only breeding at a rate of 1.38 per woman. Many Canadian provinces are increasingly depending on immigration to counter this trend. In Europe, the large waves of immigrant families, who tend to have many children, are the only thing keeping the population growing.
There are a variety of reasons for this trend. An obvious one is that there are more seniors and fewer children due to the baby-boomer phenomenon. One must also look at the social reasons. Women are increasingly placing priority on their careers and waiting to have children until they are in their forties, thus having fewer children. This has created a generational gap; a pattern that will most likely continue.
To counter this, Danny Williams has promised $1,000 for every baby born or adopted in Newfoundland. Singapore has been offering $9,000 for a second child and $18,000 for a third child. Spain and Australia also attempted to offer money for the births of any children following the first. However, the monetary incentive does not seem to have made very much headway.
Japan has chosen to appeal to the nationalist duty, but apparently the Japanese population doesn’t feel its patriotic duty extends to their family planning. While Romania did have a significant increase in childbirth after abortions were outlawed, it suffered repercussions in the form of large amounts of abandoned children.
Russia has, true to form, made baby-making a national endeavor. It declared a National Day of Conception and couples are given time off work on this day to procreate. Those with babies born nine months later receive money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.
Unfortunately, it’s not enough to implement a few bonuses. Canada must first decide who it wants to target. Policies effecting direct costs of children are more likely to influence women with low incomes, while those that reduce opportunity costs will have more impact on women with higher incomes. Therefore, if the government wants to increase quality of life along with increasing the birthrate, it needs to target middle- to upper-class families through implementing policies that will continue to increase opportunities for mothers to manage careers and motherhoods at the same time.
If Canada can manage to implement a combination of policies from the above, it could potentially make a difference in the long-term demographic trend. Ultimately, however, much depends on the “trend” factor. In France, it has become “la mode” to have babies. Time will tell if the “designer baby” trend of Hollywood will inspire a new baby boom or if it will, instead, delay it further by causing mothers to have one very expensive child later in life.
Now you go...
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