AMAC Exclusive – By Ben Solis
The West is facing a truly existential problem: year over year, women are not having enough children to meet the population replacement rate. While many governments are frantically implementing new policies to reverse this alarming trend, they largely fail to address the root causes of secularization and dissolution of the family unit that are driving declining fertility rates.
2021 marked the first time since 1937 that the U.S. population grew by fewer than one million people – a startling statistic given that the baseline population is significantly larger than it was in decades past, and nearly one-quarter of the new growth can be attributed to legal migration into the country. Although the U.S. fertility rate ticked up 1% to 1.782 births per woman in 2022 from 2021, it still remains well below the replacement rate of 2.1.
The United States is hardly alone in facing this phenomenon. According to a United Nations report released last year, “In 2021, the average fertility of the world’s population stood at 2.3 births per woman over a lifetime, having fallen from about 5 births per woman in 1950.” Furthermore, “In 2020, the global population growth rate fell under 1 percent per year for the first time since 1950.”
Most of the global population growth is being driven in developing nations, while the developed world has experienced significantly slowed growth. The populations of the United States plus 60 countries in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand are all forecasted to shrink by one percent by 2050. Western Europe, home to nearly 200 million people, witnessed a 14 percent decline in its overall birth rate in 2021.
China, the world’s most populous nation, reported they had 850,000 fewer people at the end of 2022 than the previous year, the biggest drop in 60 years. Japan, the world’s third-largest economy and a country that has long struggled with low birth rates, saw its number of registered births plummet to 799,728 last year – the lowest figure on record.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has warned that the country is “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions,” and has pledged to set up a new government agency in April to focus on the issue.
In Europe, governments have also scrambled to reverse declining birth rates. Sweden offers families a tax deduction for household services like cleaning and babysitting. In Hungary, young families are offered a loan they do not need to repay if they have a third child. Women who have four children are exempt from income taxes for life.
Poland’s government encourages couples to have more children by paying $125 per month per child to low-income families. Italy has halved taxes on baby and women’s health products and increased monthly payments for each child by 50% to $160. Ursula von der Leyen, the current President of the European Commission, introduced more generous childcare and parental leave policies while she was Germany’s family minister.
All of these reforms helped lift the fertility rate from 1.33 children per woman in 2007 to 1.49 in 2022. But fiscal incentives have not been sufficient to close the gap and bring Europe back to the replacement rate.
What Western governments seem to fail to understand – as evidenced by attempts to pay couples to have babies – is that children are not a financial asset or liability, but a divine gift.
This fundamental shift in how Western society views children can be traced directly to the secularization of the Western world. In ages past, people were perceived as made in the image of God in accordance with Judeo-Christian teachings. Rearing children was viewed as a sacred duty and joy.
19th-century German historian Arnold Hauser has argued that secularization began all the way back in the Renaissance following the rejection of the high view of the individual that pervaded the Middle Ages. Since then, the value of the human person has cheapened, culminating in the postmodern attitude that arose in the wake of World War II.
The decline of Christianity as a central pillar of Western life has gone hand in hand with declining birth rates. As the first phenomenon accelerated in the second half of the 20th century, so did the latter. American theologian Dr. Francis Schaeffer and Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in the 1970s both described the social effect of secularism as a “culture of death.”
A retrospective view of the flow of modern leftist ideas underscores the point that it is culture, not financial incentives, that either encourages or discourages child-rearing. Behind the Iron Curtain, for instance, the teachings of Pope John Paul II helped create a culture that saw birth rates increase even in economically and politically dire conditions and with a broken healthcare system. The Pope emphasized that by carrying and giving birth to children, women are participating in God’s act of creation.
At the same time, birth rates fell elsewhere throughout the 1960s and 1970s, even as living conditions dramatically improved. Only in countries like Italy and Ireland, where many still adhere to a Judeo-Christian culture of life, did birth rates remain relatively high.
If the West is to reverse the current trend of population decline, it must first embrace a culture of life and uphold the inherent dignity of every human being. Until government policies are directed at this end rather than simply bribing couples to reproduce, the problem of falling birth rates will persist.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
The irony of government, killing the unborn and then worrying about the lack of upcoming generations to sustain them. Every convoluted political policy has unintended consequences. I guess all of those millions of aborted babies were the future of society.
This is one of the mot excellent
I didn’t read the whole article because the governments aka globalists promote culture destruction, promote illegal immigration, promote abortion – it is plain and simple we are fighting evil! I pray to God for Vengeance on evil! I pray to God for mercy because I am losing my patience with the brainwashed zombies!
The decline is by design. The governmental policies are doing exactly what those who would dominate desire.
Make abortion clinics unprofitable and costly, cut funding to anti-family foundations and organizations and create out of an abortionist a legal opposite of a medical doctor profession.
Reduce the government fiscal, health and other interventions into family life. Let the government leave family alone.
On a humorous note, the downside to increasing the birth rate is it has the potential of producing more Socialist Democrats.
On a more serious and sinister note, you have folks like Bill Gates who want to eliminate 75% of the world population.
It makes me wonder if that is the long range purpose of this,or some future “vaccine”
Abortion reminds me of the novel Animal Farm.
Isn’t reduction of world population the goal of Satan and the leftists who both seem to have been gaining in popularity over the past few decades? I think before you can reduce population decline you will need to recognize and reduce evil.
The governmental policies are schizophrenic. On one side, they promote euthanasia, abortion, and the “overpopulation problem” (the UN still runs such an office, orders research, and organizes expensive conferences). Simultaneously, they worried about the lack of taxpayers to fill the social security system funds they use as their piggy bank.
Our moral problem requires more attention than the issue of China or the economy. The moral foundation of our country has weakened over the last three decades.
Reagan published his essay in defense of life and against abortion. Only Trump could nominate SCOTUS that finally removed disgraceful and criminal Roe vs. Wade provisions. But this change will be under the constant need for defense until it becomes a political consensus after most Americans deplore abortion.
Mark Levin recently stressed that abortion is like a Mengele practice. And that the media do not want to show it. Most of those discussing demographic crises do not see those Mengele practices as problematic.
In a decade or sooner, all politicians will compete with their plans to uphold man’s dignity. Television and radio will again explain that man was created in the image of God. It will be another non-partisan issue, as it should have been long ago.
Even current politicians still need to focus more on this issue.
But the American pro-life movement deserves the President Medal of Freedom since, with its victory over Roe, it has contributed greatly, in an outstanding manner, to the values and security of our beloved country. Such an honor would be a lantern stressing the importance of these values.
This article could mention that today marriage is not taking place at the numbers that has been
in the past. A huge number of men under 40 are single. Some men are saying that going on a date is like a job interview. More women are financially independent since the majority of college
graduates are now female.
It is the central truth that all Americans who care must understand: The decline of Christianity as a central pillar of Western life has gone hand in hand with declining birth rates.
Our country was founded on Christian principles, including no state religion like then, Britain with Anglicanism.
But Christian principles meant God-fearing people chose to limit their aspirations and raise moral demands for themselves high.
Good news from Idaho. Republican Senate have introduced legislation that would make it illegal to help a minor get an abortion in another state without the permission of a parent or guardian. Offenders would face two to five years in prison.
In Wyoming, on Thursday Senate voted to ban the use or prescription of abortion pills, and the bill now heads to Republican Governor Mark Gordon.
The pro-life movement is getting stronger and stronger in America, and it is an indication of our youth’s priorities. Despite attacks including totally wrong targeting by the FBI, our young people are getting involved. How encouraging it is. Praise the Lord!
Russia and Ukraine are taking steps to remedy the problem …. GO TO WAR and kill off a fraction of the population. But they need to be careful … China’s Commie regime is watching closely to note any chance of benefiting from such a war.
Evidently the influx of hundreds of thousands illegals is not enough Bring it on Same situation in Europe Swamped with Africans and still not enough? I understand Japan they do not admit immigrants Article is a bit confusing since we are beaten over our heads about overpopulation not enough resources and abuse of the planet
The world is overpopulated already, and those countries which aren’t yet overpopulated (like the USA) are subject to hordes of illegal immigrants from overpopulated countries.