A new U.S. birth record was set in 2008. Last year 4.3 million babies were born. At the same time, the birth rates in most of the rest of the world have gone down dramatically. Europeans have had declining birth rates for decades. China has had a long-standing national limitation on the number of children allowed per family. Poorer people in Africa and Asia have started to adopt modern values for family planning and child rearing. Now those people view children as avoidable expenses. Avoiding expense is particularly important in the current financial hard times the world is facing. The cry of “world overpopulation” may seem like the right impression to have, but there is an unforeseen cost to lower birth rates.
To begin with, Europeans will not be able to maintain their economies, let alone welfare states. With birth rates well below the replenishment rate of two children per woman, who will be there in a few years to replace retiring workers? Without workers, the economies of Europe will grind to a halt. Without a working economy there is no way to earn enough tax revenue to pay for even the most basic government services, especially those that focus on the elderly. Russia is a particularly interesting example. A Russian girl I worked with last summer told me she never wanted to have kids and that this was the norm for many Russian girls. This is a very scary prospect for Russia since the majority of the population is in its ’40s to ’60s. As scary as figures like Vladimir Putin may be, there is little weight behind Russia in the coming decades. Soon, all of the people who work in Russia will become too old and tired to assert power. All the while, young Russians shy away from the burdens imposed by the older generation.
The Chinese predicament is even scarier in scale. China actually limits most families to one child. To exacerbate matters, the Chinese preference for male offspring has created an excess of boys and relatively few girls. In a few more years, hundreds of millions of Chinese men will not be able to find a mate, simply for lack of women. This is a recipe for disaster in China. Just going on the one-child law, each child would eventually have to earn enough to support four grandparents and two parents. Even if this generation does not directly give support to their elders, the Chinese people as a whole will have to come up with some way to take care of the elderly without sucking up all the economic output of their progeny.
A possible, though often very unpalatable, solution to the future worker shortage woes is immigration. For years, poorer places in Africa and Asia have had very high birth rates and very high poverty rates. With the shortage of workers in Europe, many Africans and Asians have emigrated to find better lives for themselves. While many nations may not like this intrusion of foreigners, it is inevitable. Immigrants will be the only ones willing to do the work required to maintain the economy. Their work could then in turn be taxed to support the aging native population. Now, however, even poor Africans and Asians are beginning to slow down their birth rates. So, where in the world will the workers come from now?
The U.S. has the highest birth rate among the developed world’s nations; the U.S. has had record-breaking birth rates. In 25 years, the baby boomer generation hits its ’70s and ’80s. Just as they are getting to be their most expensive, this record-setting year of babies will be working in full swing. In 25 years, when China, Russia, and much of the rest of the world will be having trouble finding people to support an economy of octogenarians, we Americans will be stronger than ever. We must always remember that children are our investment in the future. Our children will shape the quality of life we have when it is our turn to age, however ungracefully. Without children, who is going to fund our Medicare and Social Security? Who is going to take care of us when we are old and gray?
Preston Saks is a Rutgers College senior majoring in political science and history. His column, “Thought is Free,” runs on alternate Thursdays.
