Under the Microscope/Prof William Reville:Over recent decades the birth rates in almost all countries in the developed world have dropped below population replacement rates. If this trend continues, extinction beckons.
This is an enormous problem, more serious for example than global warming, but, amazingly, it is being ignored in popular debate. This phenomenon has several causes, but at base, I fear, is a serious withering of the spirit of western civilisation. We are losing the will to breed.
It is well established that, in the developed world, the birth rate necessary to ensure that population numbers remain steady is 2.1 children per woman, but rates have fallen below this figure since 1975. The birth rates in the major European countries are now as follows: Ireland 1.99; France 1.90; Norway 1.81; Sweden 1.75; UK 1.74; Netherlands 1.73; Germany 1.37; Italy 1.33; Spain 1.32; and Greece 1.29. The figure for Japan is 1.28 and for the US 2.09.
At this rate it is predicted that Europe will lose 25 per cent of its "natural" population by 2060. The Japanese minister for health, Hakuo Yanagisawa, warns that if current birth rates continue the Japanese population will be 500 by the year 3000!
At the moment, European workers outnumber retirees by about 4 to 1. At current birth rates this ratio would drop to less than 2 to 1 by 2050. This would place an unbearable burden on younger workers to pay the health and pension bills of an elderly population. Governments realise this and have started to put measures in place to boost birth rates. The Polish population fell by 500,000 in the past 6 years, and the parliament recently passed legislation to pay women for each child they bear. For some time now, France has encouraged women to have babies with tax and cash incentives. The German government has announced new investment to fund full-day kindergartens to include children under the age of 3, to help mothers who work full-time. One Italian town now offers couples €10,000 for each newborn baby.
We have been accustomed to apocalyptic warnings about the global population time-bomb - one prediction was that by the year 3000 people would be so numerous that there would only be standing room on the planet. But we now know that Europe's "birth dearth" is spreading even to some developing countries. Indian women now have fewer babies than American women had in the 1950s, while the birth rates in China, Cuba and Thailand are below replacement levels.
The world's population is now 6 billion, and the UN estimates that this figure will reach 9 billion by 2050. However, the UN also admits the figure could peak at 7.5 billion by 2040, and then decline. These overall population figures reflect rapid growth in Africa and Asia, masking sharp falls in the developed world.
Unless the birth rates are turned around, the only "solution" for Europe will be massive immigration (scores of millions) of people from the developing world in order to care for the elderly and to pay taxes to maintain welfare states. This solution would be fraught with political and social difficulties and doesn't seem feasible considering how poorly the relatively small immigration into European countries has been integrated to date.
Why have birth rates plummeted in the West? One factor is the changed status of women, who have entered the labour market in huge numbers to service growing economies. Long commutes to and from work, work pressures and career ambitions, poor childcare facilities, etc all conspire to delay the age when women have children and then persuade them to have many fewer children than women had in the past. But much of the pressure on working women could be eased by enlightened social policies.
However, there is a deeper problem, and it is rooted in the overall societal model we have adopted in the West, based on extreme liberalism and moral relativism. We refuse to value any substantive thing over any other and are insidiously exhorted to feel ashamed of our European heritage. The value of individual rights is trumpeted while the responsibilities that automatically accompany rights are glossed over. Increased standards of living in a materialistic culture also blunt enthusiasm for making sacrifices for the sake of children.
We debate about how to prevent global warming but not the fact that we may leave precious few descendants to be affected one way or the other. We applaud every advance in the medical technology of assisted reproduction to allow a few people who cannot procreate in the usual manner to have children, while very many women who can conceive naturally elect not to do so. We question and lose confidence in our most basic institutions, eg the traditional family model, despite the evidence that this model is best for parents and children alike. We are losing our nerve and our optimism, which, combined with the pressures of the modern workplace, conspire to lessen our appetite for procreation.
We are sleepwalking into a huge problem. To quote the American historian Will Durant: "Great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
• William Reville is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Public Awareness of Science Officer at UCC (http://understandingscience.ucc.ie.)