Endgame?

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

Unless…. Unless what? The problem is, we cannot give a coherent answer to that question. The truth is we seem not to know even how to begin to answer that question. That is, the agencies which try to govern our destinies on this planet, our governments, our academics, our experts, do not know, have not got the slightest idea of what to do to head off that “whimper”.

Ezra Klein, columnist with the New York Times, one of their best, and Jennifer Sciubba, distinguished demographer, began a heavyweight discussion on the columnist’s NYT based The Ezra Klein Show recently. They grappled with a frightening prospect for humanity – nothing less than what looks like the impending collapse of our civilisation.

Klein began, “So, tell me what ‘the total fertility rate’ is?”

Sciubba explained that the total fertility rate is: “Let’s just say it’s the average number of children born per woman in her lifetime.”

Klein then went on to say that when he listens to the conversation about total fertility rates, there are two conversations going on at the same time. One on the left is that it’s way too high. There are too many people. The other conversation is about how critically low it is and that we’re facing “a demographic bust. We’re going to see population collapse. We are a planet growing old, certainly a bunch of countries growing old.”

They left aside the first conversation and focused on the second. They talked about the consequences of the fact that women have, on average, worldwide, about 2.2 children these days. Sciubba explained that basically, that is the replacement level. But then she said that in this century so far, we are in a global demographic divide. For example, the area in the world where it really is the highest is in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, over five children per woman on average.

But while there’s a divide, she said, the bottom line is that we’re all moving in the same direction. In the second part of the century, that’s really where we’re all going to start converging down at those lower levels.

Klein then asked her how true the statement was that as countries get richer and more educated, their fertility rate drops. “Partially true” was her answer because there are “huge” examples where that has not been the case. “Huge” as in India. India is already really below replacement level for the whole country.

She cited Paul Ehrlich’s opening to his 1968 book, Population Bomb. He recalled a trip to India. There were people everywhere, people on the streets, people eating, people drinking, people sleeping, people, people, people. “And now, those people have a total fertility rate below replacement level. And India is not a wealthy country.”

But they agreed that in general if a country has gotten richer, and that country is highly educated, highly literate, it is wealthy, that generally allows you to predict with a high level of certainty that this country is probably going to have a low fertility rate, probably below replacement level.

They were baffled by this “slightly mysterious” (Klein’s phrase) thing at the heart of their conversation. Why is it a demographic fact that when you look around the world, rich countries, more educated countries have fewer children? Why does wealth lead to fewer children?

They then moved from the focus on material well-being and began to talk about human values and the tremendous shift in values and norms across western societies. Sciubba then got personal and almost went to confession:

And so, I think about my own life. So I have two children. And I have values beyond just wanting those children. Sorry to them if they listen to this. Thank goodness, they probably won’t, till they’re older. I do value my free time. I do value a nice meal at a restaurant. I value time with friends, time with my spouse, et cetera, et cetera. I value my career. And I value time with them the most. But you know what? It does compete for time.

Klein agreed but put it a little differently. “As countries become richer and more educated, they become more individualistic. And when you’re more individualistic, and people are making decisions more about their life, their self-expression, their set of choices … then children are one choice competing among many.”

They didn’t say this but it comes down to “freedom” of choice, “freedom” for choice. Ultimately it is about how we understand freedom.

So, on a personal level it all seems to come down to the choices people are offered by our society and our economic circumstances. As a society we expect to be able to make our choices freely and at the end of the day it is our personal value system which will guide us – or be a moral imperative for us – in making those choices. That, however, offers no solution to the demographic winter which our world faces.

They then considered the powerful impact of societal cultural values on all this – clearly implying that while people might feel they are acting freely in all the decisions they make, their freedom is much more limited than they think, limited by the norms prevailing in their communities.

They then nuanced their view of how much real freedom they might actually be enjoying.

Klein reflected that if he had told his parents that he was going to have kids at 24, they would wonder what went wrong with birth control. “We’d have been the only ones in our friend group with kids at that point. And so, there is this way in which, yes, there’s a lot of individualism, but the individualism also has very potent cultural grooves, right? You’re supposed to go and get education, and then more education and then more education, and then establish yourself in your career and be financially in a good spot, and of course, be married.

“And by the time you’ve done all that, you might be 30. You might be 32. You might be 36. And even if you wanted to have three or four kids at that point, you do end up running, particularly for women, into a biological clock problem.”

Sciubba drew from this observation the consequence that the total fertility rate for the U.S., writ large, is about 1.6 to 1.7 children per woman. Below replacement level. For the more education the lower it is on average. However she also pointed out that the gap with highly educated and less highly educated is not that big anymore.

They then moved to look at what we might call the global picture and how state policy – or any other agency’s policy – might shift us from a path which many see as a path of self-annihilation.

Is this really something that is amenable to policy change, though? Klein asked.

One of the things that is most striking to me about the data here…is that across many different kinds of societies, including some that have seen this as a crisis for their country for some time – I think here of Japan, I think here of South Korea – the ability to shift this through policy – and people have tried a lot of different things and a lot of different kinds of messaging and tax incentives and this and that – it doesn’t really seem like anything has worked.

And in the most extreme cases – again, I think here of South Korea, which I believe is now below total fertility rate of one, so I mean, you’re entering geometric decline – they’ve not been able to turn that around…. Some of the extreme cases, like some of these East Asian countries now see this as a genuine threat?

Klein and Sciubba then go on a virtual tour of the world to find a country which has tackled its demographic decline successfully. Depressingly, nothing seems to work.

I visited Sweden last summer and I was impressed by the evidence I saw of young families – and was told that Sweden is the best country in Europe in which to have children because of all the benefits offered. But all this is to no avail in bringing their fertility rate to or above replacement level.

The demographic “engineers” are trying to raise fertility rates to replacement level and trying to create what Sciubba describes as this nice stovepipe age structure. In this you get a steady number of people being born, aging into the workforce and aging out, without any scramble to build kindergartens or scramble to pay for Social Security.

Dream on.

The conclusion of their virtual tour is that we really don’t have societies that hang out there at replacement level. Once they tend to fall below it, they tend to stay there.

Klein asks how do you get a population, if you’re a State, to have fertility rates that go back up above replacement level? “Well, you can strip away individual rights.” He hastens to add that he is not advocating this. Some totalitarian regimes tried and one succeeded monstrously – that of Nicolai Ceausescu in communist Romania. “So, no,” he concludes, “we do not really have examples where a society goes way below and then comes back up to above replacement level and hangs out there, and everyone is happy.”

No one thinks that the Ceausescu road is the one we will be travelling! But what road will we be travelling? Neither Klein nor Sciubba, with the best will in the world, really have any suggestions.  It appears that the modern world, in its modernity or postmodernity incarnations, as regards this impending threat is just stumped?

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In Part II of this article, next month, we will look at Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal work, After Virtue, which traces false ideas which have colonised our culture and are conceivably at the root of this predicament.