Yesterday, I posted an entry about the ramifications that have come about in China, after the earthquake, with regard to their “one-child only” policy. This country’s misguided attempt to avoid an IMAGINED over-population crisis, has left so many families heartbroken. Flying in the face of God’s design will NEVER net you good. It is my prayer that this will become a wake-up call around the globe, and that more people will begin to embrace life instead of blindly snuffing it out.
Here is an article written by Doug Phillips of Vision Forum ministries regarding the value of children and the falsehoods of the over-population myth. Vision Forum has been a wonderful resource to our family and I highly recommend their products and resources. For more information visit http://www.visionforum.com .
This article can be found here:
http://www.visionforum.com/hottopics/blogs/dwp/2008/06/3845.aspx
The article follows:
When You Look At The Shocking New Trends in Birthrate Demographics, You Begin to Understand the Wisdom of God’s Pro-Baby Mandate and the Folly of the Baby Banning Worldview
At Vision Forum, we are passionate about life. That means being passionate about babies. We believe that the Bible should be taken seriously when it reminds us that children are a “reward” from God. We reject as unbiblical the spirit of selfishness which has contributed to government-subsidized, legalized abortion, and the contraceptive mentality, which often leads to non-clinical abortions from abortifacient contraceptives like the Pill. And to the extent that the Church has participated in either, we must acknowledge that we have blood on our hands. The consequences are far reaching.
One such consequence is our population crisis. And yes there is a big one. But its not an overpopulation crisis we are facing, but precisely the opposite. A growing number of think tanks are beginning to present the data of the demographic nightmare we are bequeathing to our children. Hoover is one such think tank. The February/March 2005 edition of their publication Policy Review, reveals the following:
Global fertility rates have fallen by half since 1972. For a modern nation to replace its population, experts explain, the average woman needs to have 2.1 children over the course of her lifetime. Not a single industrialized nation today has a fertility rate of 2.1, and most are well below replacement level.
In Ben Franklin’s day, by contrast, America averaged eight births per woman. American birth rates today are the highest in the industrialized world — yet even those are nonetheless just below the replacement level of 2.1. Moreover, that figure is relatively high only because of America’s substantial immigrant population. Fertility rates among native born American women are now far below what they were even in the 1930s, when the Great Depression forced a sharp reduction in family size.
Population decline is by no means restricted to the industrial world. Remarkably, the sharp rise in American fertility rates at the height of the baby boom — 3.8 children per woman — was substantially above Third World fertility rates today. From East Asia to the Middle East to Mexico, countries once fabled for their high fertility rates are now falling swiftly toward or below replacement levels. In 1970, a typical woman in the developing world bore six children. Today, that figure is about 2.7. In scale and rapidity, that sort of fertility decline is historically unprecedented. By 2002, fertility rates in 20 developing countries had fallen below replacement levels. 2002 also witnessed a dramatic reversal by demographic experts at the United Nations, who for the first time said that world population was ultimately headed down, not up. These decreases in human fertility cover nearly every region of the world, crossing all cultures, religions, and forms of government.
Declining birth rates mean that societies everywhere will soon be aging to an unprecedented degree. Increasing life expectancy is also contributing to the aging of the world’s population. In 1900, American life expectancy at birth was 47 years. Today it is 76. By 2050, one out of five Americans will be over age 65, making the U.S. population as a whole markedly older than Florida’s population today. Striking as that demographic graying may be, it pales before projections for countries like Italy and Japan. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, 42 percent of all people in Italy and Japan will be aged 60 or older.
In short, the West is beginning to experience significant demographic changes, with substantial cultural consequences. Historically, the aged have made up only a small portion of society, and the rearing of children has been the chief concern. Now children will become a small minority, and society’s central problem will be caring for the elderly. Yet even this assumes that societies consisting of elderly citizens at levels of 20, 30, even 40 or more percent can sustain themselves at all. That is not obvious.
Population decline is also set to ramify geometrically. As population falls, the pool of potential mothers in each succeeding generation shrinks. So even if, well into the process, there comes a generation of women with a higher fertility rate than their mothers’, the momentum of population decline could still be locked in. Population decline may also be cemented into place by economics. To support the ever-growing numbers of elderly, governments may raise taxes on younger workers. That would make children even less affordable than they are today, decreasing the size of future generations still further.
If worldwide fertility rates reach levels now common in the developing world (and that is where they seem headed), within a few centuries, the world’s population could shrink below the level of America’s today. Of course, it’s unlikely that mankind will simply cease to exist for failure to reproduce. But the critical point is that we cannot reverse that course unless something happens to substantially increase fertility rates. And whatever might raise fertility rates above replacement level will almost certainly require fundamental cultural change.
Why does modern social life translate into the lower birth rates that spark all those wider implications? Urbanization is one major factor. In a traditional agricultural society, children are put to work early. They also inherit family land, using its fruits to care for aging parents. In a modern urban economy, on the other hand, children represent a tremendous expense, and one increasingly unlikely to be returned to parents in the form of wealth or care. With the growth of a consumer economy, potential parents are increasingly presented with a zero-sum choice between children and more consumer goods and services for themselves.
Posted by Doug Phillips on June 12, 2008
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