Footnote to my post #2434, re: Europe's attempt to change people instead of its outmoded institutions/laws...
THE OUTLOOK: Worldwide Drop Confounds Experts
The effects of the shift will resonate far beyond Europe. Last year Japan's fertility rate -- the number of children born to the average woman in a lifetime -- fell to 1.39, the lowest level it has ever reached. In the United States, where a large pool of new immigrants helps keep the birth rate higher than in any other prosperous country, the figure is still slightly below an average of 2.1 children per woman -- the magic number needed to keep the population from starting to shrink.
[...]
"What is happening now has simply never happened before in the history of the world," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer based at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "This is terra incognita. If these trends continue, in a generation or two there may be countries where most people's only blood relatives will be their parents."
"Would it be a lonelier and sadder world?" he continued. "Yes, I think it would. But that might simply be the limits of my own imagination. Frankly, it's just impossible to really conceive of what this world will be like in 50 years. But when you come to the end of one era it's almost always impossible to see your way into the next."
THE WATERSHED: Birth Incentives No Longer Work
Perhaps no country has tried harder to change the future than Sweden.
Decades ago, with its birth rate dwindling, Sweden decided to support family life with a public generosity found nowhere else. Couples who both work and have small children enjoy cash payments, tax incentives and job leaves combined with incredible flexibility to work part time for as many as eight years after a child's birth.
Sweden spends 10 times as much as Italy or Spain on programs intended to support families. It spends nearly three times as much per person on such programs as the United States. So there should be no surprise that Sweden, despite its wealth, had the highest birth rate in Europe by 1991.
With 10 million mostly middle-class people, Sweden may have little in common with any other. But its experience clearly suggested that if countries wanted more babies they would have to pay for them, through tax incentives, parental leave programs and family support. At least that's what nearly all the experts thought it showed.
"We were a model for the world," said Marten Lagergren, under secretary in the Ministry of Social Health and Welfare, and the man responsible for figuring out what is happening with Sweden's birth rate. "They all came to examine us. People thought we had some secret. Unfortunately, it seems that we do not."
Sometime after 1990, the bottom dropped out of Sweden's baby boom. Between then and 1995, the birth rate fell sharply, from 2.12 to 1.6. Most people blamed the economy, which had turned sour and forced politicians to trim -- ever so slightly -- the country's benefit program. It is normal for people to put off having children when the future looks doubtful, so the change made sense.
But then, the economy got better and the birth rate fell faster and farther than ever. By March of this year the figure for Sweden was the almost same as that in Japan -- 1.42. And though it's too soon to say, officials here think it might be falling still.
[snip]
nytimes.com
The above scrap about demographics perfectly illustrates my point on the difference between the US and Europe: the US, although being a Western, industrialized country like most of Europe's, will never undergo a demographic draining since the US policy is to rely on immigration to make up for manpower shortages (see the 1-HB visa issue in the computer industry). Contrariwise, the European approach is to foster pro-birth policies and family incentives --that is, to modify the sexual/social behavior of people. Again, the EU/US divide is crystal-clear: the US resorts to tuning up its (immigration) laws/institutions whereas Europe wants to sweat people into making more babies... |
