When I originally wrote this article my husband and I were expecting our third child, due in December. Like most expectant parents we were excited, and a little anxious, but waited in eager anticipation to meet the newest addition to our family.
But to some people, we’d already had enough children, and we’re being selfish by having more.
Eco-wowsers and ‘large’ families
Upon the arrival of the newest child in the Beckham bunch, Britain’s Optimum Population Trust chief Simon Ross was quoted in The Guardian newspaper as saying: ‘The Beckhams, and others like London Mayor Boris Johnson, are very bad role models with their large families.’
Each of the families mentioned have four children. Shock and horror.
Even noted Australian philanthropist Dick Smith has an equally strange view of family and has started a campaign to limit our population growth. A couple of years ago in the Daily Telegraph, Smith was reported to have said that the human use of natural resources was ‘like a plague of locusts’ and has called for Australia to adopt a two-child policy.
“We have to decide – are we like locusts that breed to huge numbers and then die off? Or are we like the majority of other magnificent natural creatures in this country which have lived in balance for millions of years?” he said.
But Smith did not finish there.
“I would like to see Australia stabilise at 24 to 25 million.” he continued. “I don’t see it by force. I see it by saying to parents, ‘It’s best to have two kids’. I see us having an immigration intake of 70,000 per year.”
And so, it seems that it is not enough for the green mentality to stick to issues regarding the environment and sustainable economic management, or ridiculous carbon pricing schemes that have already been proven ineffectual in New Zealand, but they have to control the birth rate too!
Miranda Devine, of the Sunday Telegraph, put it very succinctly when she wrote: “Rather than rejoicing at a healthy new life being welcomed into a loving, intact family, the totalitarian green mentality is about controlling every aspect of human existence.”
Controlling birth rates
If you want to fully understand the consequences of controlling or limiting birth rates you need only look as far as modern day Japan.
In a similar way to many of the Western European countries, Japan’s population is getting older and the birth rate is falling.
In 2008 the birth rate in Japan was 1.37 children per woman (in Tokyo it is as low as 1.09). According to the Japanese health ministry this means that the current population of 127 million will drop to 95 million by 2050.
But added to this problem of low fertility rates are others.
Japan’s life expectancy is among the highest in the world. Women live to an average of 86.1 years and men an average of 79.3. Basically, Japan’s population is made up of a large percentage of non-working elderly people who rely on social security. Currently the smaller working age demographic support them but as the population decreases, yet the overall population ages, the pressing issue is the size of the labour force (expected to decrease in size by 18% by 2030) in relation to the overall population size.
Current estimates are that by 2055, 40% of the Japanese population will be aged 65 or more and most will not be working. This is a huge increase from 20% in 2006.
Japan already has a massive debt, more than twice its overall economic output and the large elderly population will lead the country further into debt as it struggles to finance health services, social welfare programs and retirement programs.
But Japan is not alone in their dilemma. China and South Korea face similar problems and will likely begin to feel the effects of their rapidly aging populations and declining birth rates in the next 10-15 years.
In all 3 countries the ratio of people aged 65 and over in relation to the overall population has been steadily rising and today stand at 23% in Japan, 11% in South Korea and 9% in China. Their birth rates comparatively are 1.27, 1.22 and 1.77 respectively. All three of these birth rates are among the lowest in the world.
Australia’s growth rates
At the end of the day, I’m not even sure what Dick Smith is worried about. The Australian Bureau of Statistics sent out a media release in June 2011 with the heading: ‘Australia’s population growth rate continues to slow’.
In the year ending December 2010 Australia’s growth rate was 1.5% which has decreased since a peak growth rate of 2.2% in the year ending December 2008. In real figures, Australia’s population at the end of December 2010 was 22,477,400 people, up 325,500 over that 12 month period. In the preceding year the population increased by 421,300 people.
The growth of 1.5% or 325,500 people is actually the lowest growth in a 12 month period since the year ending December 2006 when the growth was 316,200 people.
Of this overall increase in 2010, net overseas migration accounted for 53% of growth. In other words, only 47% of the overall growth was as a result of what is called ‘natural increase’ and is calculated by the number of registered births minus the number of registered deaths. It should be noted here that there was a 2% rise in registered deaths over that 12 month period ending December 2010 whilst the birth rate itself remained steady.
Now, if we followed Dick Smith’s advice and limited all families to two children what we would see is this: dropping birth rates that would likely affect the population growth as intended but we would also see in much clearer way the overall aging of our population and in the next 10-20 years or so we would be in a very similar situation to Japan where our working age population would be far smaller than our non-working age population. As we can already see in Japan, that poses dire consequences for our country overall.
So, I may not be a demographer but I’m not stupid. Limiting the number of children families can have is ridiculous and it’s not going to solve any problems regarding the use of natural resources. In fact, I see far greater risks with limiting birth rates than I do in our increasing population.
Surely there is another way to ensure there are more resources for future generations rather than decreasing the number of people in future generations?
Originally published in ave maria
Originally posted 2014-08-21 05:13:51.