In 2006 the oscar-nominated science fiction film Children of Men introduced cinema-goers to the idea of a world in which humans had ceased to have offspring. As urbane residents of the 21st century we are quite fond of smiling at how history has overtaken imagination and we now sport the portable communication devices that were make-believe just decades ago. Clearly, though, no-one would want Children of Men to come to fruition. Yet a similarly catastrophic idea is gaining ground amongst respected demographers, economists and social scientists.
Films like An inconvenient truth used statistics relating to the demise of our ecology to convince us that there was no greater issue facing the world today than global warming. Yet it appears that humanity may be hit on the left while it is busy looking to the right. The documentary Demographic Winter examines the disturbing link between declining fertility rates and the economic and social well-being of nations. The implications unpacked by a wide range of secular and Christian economists, social scientists and researchers are truly disturbing.
The documentary reports that the birth-rates of more than 70 nations are now well-below replacement rate; Europe boasts a meager 1.38 children per woman. Nor is this a tendency confined to the developed world. Global birth rates have actually dropped 50 per cent in 50 years. Africa, South America and Eurasia show parallel decreases with countries like Mexico and Latvia recording total population declines as high as 13 per cent over ten years.
Paradoxically, the world's population is predicted to continue to grow for at least the next 50 years. However, as one contributing economist puts it:
"The reason why the world population has increased over the past hundred years is not that people have started breeding like rabbits but because they have stopped dying like flies."
Population growth, the film asserts, is related to a health explosion, not the detonation of a population bomb. By contrast verifiable international figures reveal that the total number of children under five is already in decline.
The results, the documentary points out, are likely to be ‘demographic winter’ - a self-perpetuating decrease in the number of people able to support an increasingly aged population dependent on ailing economies. At present developed countries maintain economic growth only through the immigration of skilled labor, but with birth rates dropping in developing countries as well the film asserts the crisis is not more than a century off. Demographically speaking, that's on the other side of the door. "Adam Smith, probably the greatest of all economists, once wrote that prosperity is associated with growing populations," Dr Gary Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Economics tells viewers, " and depression is associated with declining populations."
Now many people might still choose to celebrate such a decline. After all, isn't the world struggling under a lack of resources? Aren't our carbon footprints threatening to stamp out all life? However Demographic Winter marshals a professor of sustainable growth to point out that even though birth rates have dropped, the number of households has increased. The result it appears is an overall increase in carbon usage even as children disappear.
The question might well be asked, what is this to the Christian world? These secular scientists are quick to point out that children are still being disproportionately born to people of 'faith' - Jews, Muslims, Christians - and they go on to make interesting points about the benefits of traditional family structures. So we’re the good guys, right? However the identified causes of infertility in the secular world - increases in the number of working women; greater financial aspirations among potential parents; the medical ability to eliminate or substantially delay pregnancy; instability in family structures, et cetera - are well known in the Christian world. What young Australian Christian hasn't felt pressure to put off marriage and children until education is complete or a career secured? Or, for the married, what about the subtle suggestion that more than two offspring would unfairly deprive our progeny and ourselves - even the Gospel - in this expensive country?
