Low Fertility is a topic we were learning about sometime between parenthood and breast feeding. A long FIVE page article was read to emphasize some of the statistics about modern fertility rates that have been scaring demographers recently. The intro explains how countries such as Germany, Italy (Mr. S’s sanctuary) and Japan have low fertility rates of 1.6 . This is a considerable problem, as it takes 2 people to make a baby, and therefore in order to sustain the population, the average should be at least 2. (Also, making a 6th of a baby sounds BAD) However, the overall world population is still increasing rapidly. Shockingly, the projections for what the world’s population will be in 2100 is between 5.5 billion and 43.6 billion. I guess by then we will be flying spaceships and partying it up on Mars, but that’s still a HUGE number! The article also explains how these predictions can be very inaccurate, as the baby boom proved in the past.
The main factor towards low fertility is how the country deals with its people, not just the citizens on their own . In countries that are accepting to those having children, perhaps more so then marriage the population is increasing. However for those where co-habilitation is seen as a very negative thing then there is a stronger chance for decline. People will then live with their parents for longer before getting married and having their own family. This makes sense, as we learned a lot about idea in Family Studies soc. Countries with economic security and those that give large family benefits will also have high fertility rates. One other factor is “maternal role incompatibility” where countries that make it very hard on parents or women will have people having to chose between family or work, and this isn’t a good thing. This page of the article of 2 people crammed into small cubicles in an office, if I had to work like that I think I would freak out! Not saying low fertility is a good thing...but that is pretty CRAAAAMPED!
The fears section describes how that without sustaining the population, places like Italy could run out of people in 200 years (ouchh, sorry sir), unless others move in. “99% of population growth is coming from developing countries” Thats also a pretty crazy statistic. In these countries there is a massive youth population, yet no economy or work force strong enough to employ them. The picture of people protesting made me imagine how hard it must be for some people, trying to survive among 10 million others, with no jobs, and how they can come to other countries flooding the market. Reminds me of the south park episode where immigrants from the future came and everyone shouted “DEYTOOKREJERR” (slang for they took our jobs!) Another big fear has to due with the ages of the future population. If less children are born in developed countries, and the Boomers are living into much older years, how can we support them? Thankfully youtube has the answer to that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17A3wD6Vx7g ....I found out about that robot from this video http://www.cracked.com/video_17156_7-robots-most-likely-rise-up-against-humanity.html. Ok hopefully that super lightened up the mood, the article goes on and on about this issue, offering solutions such as saying policies should be changed to promote more children being born and also how the age of dependency cap should probably be more realistically rethought out.
“Whether population declines, stabilizes, or grows more slowly, the change in age structure produced by lower fertility and longer life expectancy may be the most important demographic influence on sustainability..” I think this quote sums up the article, because in the end there is no clear prediction as to what the future will be like, and it will be a combination of all of these things to decide whether or not countries can sustain their population. Eventually we will come to an equilibrium, or end up killing each other (hopefully not) or move to space (as mentioned above!) but not knowing for sure keeps things interesting.
Article: “Low Fertility and Sustainability” - Martha Farnsworth Riche
Video I got my title from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uneIieUrgI
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