SOLVING FOR X

“We've got to persuade people to understand that getting married is important, having children is important.” The words of a conservative Catholic cleric? Some right-wing, pro-life radical? Nope. Those are the words of Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister and Founder of Singapore.

Appearing recently on Singapore TV, the 88 year-old Yew was not giving a lecture in defense of the family, he was decrying the death of the nation he himself had founded. Singapore may have one of the world’s highest standards of living, but it also has the world’s lowest fertility-rate and its population is dramatically imploding.

The fertility-rate is the number of children a woman will have over her lifetime. The minimum necessary for a society to replace itself is 2.1: one for her, one for her mate, and 0.1 to account for infant mortality. Singapore is at 0.75 and the rate has been declining since the 70’s after Yew himself instituted a policy called “Stop at Two” which paid women to get sterilized.  

Because Singapore is a small nation, it didn’t take long for the fertility reduction policy to manifest its effects. At first, it had the desired effect: a reduction in the number of child dependents freed up labor for Singapore’s economic machine. In fact, the economic turnabout was so quick that Singapore became known as the “Asian miracle”.

With few dependents and lots of capital, Singapore’s standard of living soared. But by 1980, Singapore was forced to begin importing migrant labor to keep its economic engine going. There simply were not enough young Singaporese. Yew’s fertility reduction policy had worked well, too well.

In 1980, Yew dropped his “Stop at Two” policy and replaced it with “Three or More”, which, instead of paying women to get sterilized, paid them to have babies. But, as Yew’s recent plea seems to evince, it hasn’t worked. As one commentator put it: the Singaporese seemed to have “acquired a taste for small families and shopping.”

Near tears, Yew further implored his people: "If we go on like that, this place will fold up, because there'll be no original citizens left to form the majority...Do we want to replace ourselves or do we want to shrink and get older and be replaced by migrants...?"

Though the desire to maintain political control through an ethnic majority seems to be at the root of Yew’s comments, the larger issue at some point for the aging Singaporese is simply going to be the need to have someone around to help them get to and from the toilet.

Singapore isn’t alone. A 2007 U.N report noted that the fertility rate is plunging in almost every country in the world (except for a few in sub-Saharan Africa), and warned of the effects of a “graying world” on the world’s health care systems. According to the report, the crisis point for each nation is when the over-65 population surpasses the under-5 population.

One demographer calls it “Solving for X”, X being the point at which the lines representing the two population sectors cross on a graph, foretelling a point, perhaps a generation hence, when there will simply be “too many old people.” Perhaps, this is why many countries whose populations have already reached “X”, particularly in Europe, have begun liberating their euthanasia laws.

“Solving for X” is at the root of the debate over America’s “safety-net” entitlements: Medicare and Social Security. These programs depend on taxing the incomes of the current working generation to pay for the care of retirees. In 1940, when Social Security was instituted, there were 42 workers per retiree. Today there are 2.8.

Recently, Paul Ryan created a stir over his plan to fix Medicare, which is endangered by the collapse of this worker to retiree ratio. His detractors have claimed that Ryan want to “throw Granny over the cliff”. However, the math is clear, Granny is already headed for the cliff, and you, right behind her.

Ironically, our “safety-net” crisis has been wrought by the very generation that will probably suffer most from its collapse. Like the people of Singapore, our own society has “acquired a taste for small families and shopping, not to mention the 50-80 million missing people due to the 2.7 unborn children we have aborted every minute of every day since January 27, 1973 (Roe v Wade).

Amazingly, in the midst of this crisis, President Obama has instituted an anti-fertility policy (HHS Mandate) which will hasten the collapse of the worker to retiree ratio, assuring the destruction of the social-safety net programs he pretends to champion, and setting us on a course for the economic and national melt-down which inevitably follows population implosion. Perhaps he should speak with Mr. Yew.

Guam's Demographic Demise

Printed in the Umatuna, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam, 9/4/11.

A recent local online poll asked: “The 2010 Census counted 154,805 people on Guam. Surprised?” Most of the respondents voted “yes”. Perhaps they were reacting to time stuck in traffic as a population indicator, but, yes, the population is well below the 2010 U.N. estimate of 179,693.

While some are blaming the low number on the “exodus” from Guam that began with the economic downturn in the late 90‘s, a more likely culprit can be found in an analysis of the data from the 2000 census.

In 2000, there were 35,599 women  of childbearing age (15-44) who had given birth to total of 55,196 children. This equates to a fertility rate of 1.5 children per woman which is far below the population replacement rate of  2.1.

We can also assume that fertility has continued to decline. Vital Statistics reported 3,421 births in 2010 versus 3787 in 2000, a 10% decline. Interestingly Guam’s abortion rate is also 10% with one out of every ten pregnancies ending in abortion. This means that our 2010 fertility rate is probably closer 1.3.

Of course, Guam is very transient which makes it difficult to use such numbers to decipher deeper social issues. But a decline in Guam’s fertility rate was noted as far back as 1984 in the Journal of Biosocial Science (16:231-239 Cambridge University Press):

"Since the end of World War II, the Guam native population, who are mostly Roman Catholics, has undergone one of the most dramatic socioeconomic developments ever recorded. They have rapidly become incorporated into the dominant American culture and economy. This accelerated process of modernization has been accompanied by a very sharp fertility decline. One reason for this decline has been the increasing defection of Guam Roman Catholic women from the traditional teaching of their Church on the subject of birth control. This trend of fertility decline, although at higher levels, resembles that of East Asian countries with rapid fertility decline." 

The countries referred to in the report are Japan,Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore. Japan, the country most economically connected with Guam, is now the “oldest” country in the world with nearly a quarter of its population over 65, and with a fertility rater of only 1.25, is already in the throes of demographic meltdown.

The U.N. Population Division predicts that Japan, as well as other countries with similar fertility rates (and that includes Guam) will have two seniors for every one child by 2050.The economic consequences of such a forecast shouldn’t take much number crunching. Business guru Peter Drucker has noted, “The dominant factor for business in the next two decades...is not going to be economics or technology. It will be demographics.”

The above mentioned countries became post-war powerhouses as their populations boomed and human capital became abundant. However, the anti-natal attitudes and policies that began creeping into most industrialized nations in the 70’s is now showing its gray head, and the prospect of economic collapse has caused the governments of Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Australia, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and others to begin paying parents to have children.  

The irony of course is that we have been duped for decades into believing that fewer children meant greater prosperity, and it seems to be true since the world’s wealthiest countries are currently those with the lowest fertility rates. However, the fact that many of those countries are now frantically trying to increase their birthrates should tell us that something has gone terribly wrong.

Most industrialized societies have created social safety nets that depend on taxing the current work force. Because that work force has decreased by half over the last 40 years while the number of pensioners has more than doubled, the whole system is beginning to collapse. There simply isn’t the work force/tax base to sustain the bloated entitlement state. Can anybody say “Greece”?

History has witnessed periods of low fertility before but the current population implosion is a different sort of animal. Whereas past low fertility periods were normally connected to war, famine, and pestilence, the current birth dearth is due primarily to voluntary childlessness, something unknown to history, at least on the massive scale we are now witnessing.

That “Catholic” Guam is in the same pack as Japan and the others in this race towards collective societal suicide is more than just an economic concern. Since God’s first command was to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”... it is an eternal concern as well.

For an in-depth expose on what demographers are calling “one of the most ominous events of modern history” watch the DVD “Demographic Winter” which can be ordered from www.demographicwinter.com (or found at the Cathedral Gift Shop).