There’s a slow-motion panic brewing around the declining birth rates of wealthy nations.
The replacement rate of a population — commonly understood to be a minimum of 2.1 children per woman — is indeed plummeting across the industrialized world.
It’s being felt most acutely in Asia, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and China, where the replacement rate hovers around 1.0, and where the respective governments are actively alarmed. All sorts of incentives are being tried to get couples to have more babies — generous childcare, parental leave, cash bonuses — but with little success.
There is some urgency. As a society gets older, its resources grow increasingly strained. The young have always subsidized the old, but when there are too many old and not enough young, the healthcare and pension systems get overused and underfunded. When there aren’t enough people to supply a workforce, industry moves elsewhere. Schools get shuttered, towns get hollowed out, investment money flees for greener pastures. It isn’t pretty.
Yes, the reasons for declining birth rates are many, and profusely documented. Career choices, reproductive choices, lifestyle choices, political instability, shifting cultural values — take your pick —all have contributed. You could even make the case that the wealth of these nations is, in itself, a cause of infertility.
But the most obvious reason birth rates are falling — again, this is all over the world — is that people of child-rearing age are taking a look around and saying “No thanks.” Adults living in their parents’ basements do not fancy themselves great candidates for parenthood. Even among the relatively secure, the world is looking unreasonably perilous, and the peril is not abating. This is not the ideal climate — in all senses of the word — for child-rearing.
This is an attitude that, consciously or not, has taken hold in virtually every wealthy country. It explains, at least partially, our own country’s replacement rate, which is a discouraging 1.6.
It also explains the recent rantings from the right about women and babies. Elon Musk has called low birth rates a “much bigger risk to civilization than global warming," and he’s not entirely wrong — at least about the problem.
But when RFK Jr. says 1.6 is a national security threat, when JD Vance talks about childless cat ladies, when Mehmet Oz says “one in three Americans are ‘under-babied,’” and when a war on contraception goes on under the radar, we know they’re all reading from the same playbook.
They’ve been called “pronatalists,” a word to watch. And what they’re selling is variations on the Great Replacement Theory.
GRT, if you recall, is the wingnut conspiracy theory that presumes the existence of an insidious cabal of liberals, communists, Democrats, and drag queens, all financed by George Soros, all dedicated to flooding America with hordes of rapists and murderers from what Trump charmingly calls “shithole countries.” This very woke cabal is supposedly engaged in replacing white Christians with a new race of mongrels, and using the extra votes to promote horrifying policies like drinkable water and affordable healthcare.
The racism isn’t even below the surface. When these loons talk about replacement rate, they’re quite clear about who is, and is not, an acceptable replacement.
During the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, when the neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us,” they were understating their ambitions. What they really meant was that Blacks, Latinos, immigrants — or any of those other “others” — won’t replace them either.
This is where The Handmaid’s Tale starts to flirt with reality. Forced childbirth — a form of slave labor — is one of a very few societal models that might make a dent in the replacement rate, though at what cost? Don’t think this isn’t what Vance, Musk, and the tech bros have in mind. I doubt they’ll get us there, but they’ll certainly try.
Even more diabolical would be what we might call the RFK Jr model, in which widespread death becomes official policy. All of Kennedy’s actions so far have been in the service of the grim reaper. He seems to be culling the herd, deliberately shortening the lives of anyone with, say, a weak immune system. If he can kill off enough people, fewer replacements will ultimately be needed. So he’s teaching a whole generation of MAGA morons to forget vaccines, devalue science, ignore centuries of public health wisdom and, wherever possible, die. It’s the patriotic thing to do.
Of course, the most obvious answer to the replacement problem, is the one that will face the most ferocious headwinds: immigration.
When approached rationally, this is a no-brainer. Demographers, economists, and sociologists have long understood that the migration of people from high-birth-rate regions to low-birth-rate regions is a win-win for both regions. Societies have always been remade through the assimilation of immigrants, not least our own.
As virtually all Americans are descended, one way or another, from immigrants, you’d think this wouldn’t be a big intellectual leap, even for dimwits. Because ironically, the Great Replacement Theory is correct, in a way. White Christian society is indeed being subsumed — replaced, if you will — by a more blended culture. This has been going on for decades, even centuries, with a constant influx of new arrivals willing to work, settle, and procreate both inside and outside their communities, just as their forebears did.
Yes, the steady march of immigration has been set back by Stephen Miller and his ICE ghouls, but migration always finds a way. It’s driven by forces and impulses he can’t control.
And it’s not just in this country. Europe’s migration issues are more acute than ours, and their racism is at least as ugly. But in every case, the best chance of getting to a 2.1 replacement rate is Miller’s worst nightmare: a multi-ethnic society.
Science argues strongly for this. The cross-pollination of ethnicities — the “mixing of blood,” as the racists put it — is known to strengthen future generations in innumerable ways. This is basic evolutionary theory and should be common knowledge, but because the racism comes with so much received superstition and misinformation, we’re blocked from understanding what’s actually good for the survival of the species.
Immigration is a complex issue, and assimilation is never smooth. But there is little doubt that over time there’s a net benefit to society. There is even less doubt that pronatalists, white supremacists, and their Republican enablers will refuse to discuss it, ever.
Meanwhile, the declining birth rate is a ticking bomb, and it’ll keep ticking whether we discuss it or not. If the decades-long climate discussion is any indication, we’re in for a lot of denial, a lot of deflection, and a lot of kicking the bomb down the road.
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