As the world enters the 21^st Century, a profound change is taking place in the distribution of the populations and wealth of its nations.  These “mega trends” and their consequences will be the defining forces of the new century.

Over the course of the last millennium Europe (including Russia) and its Western offshoots (including the USA) had explosive combined growth of populations, but even more meteoric growth of their combined economies.  Fueled successively by the agricultural and industrial revolutions which they pioneered, and the raw materials of the New World they settled, combined European derived populations grew from less than one-sixth to one-third of the world’s people.  But their combined economies rose from less than one-sixth to two-thirds of the world’s production of wealth as measured by GDP.

Since peaking prior to WWI, the proportion of European peoples’ populations has declined to one-fifth of the world’s total.  The redistribution of population growth by numbers of persons has been nearly equally spread between Latin America, Asia, and Africa since WWI.  However, the rate of population growth in Asia has now slowed to below the world’s current average of 1⅔ percent growth per year.

Over the course of the past quarter century the combined European nations grew at slightly below 1 percent per year, but this growth is deceiving as an indicator of demographic health.  During this period, if one subtracts increases in growth due to immigration from the third world and increase in life expectancy, combined population would have declined.

The explanation for this phenomenon is due to a decline in fertility to well below that required for zero population growth.  This level of decline includes all the major European nations and their offshoots other than the United States, which reversed its decline in the early Eighties and returned to zero population growth fertility.  The European Union’s fertility rate is only 70 percent of that required for natural maintenance of constant population.

Since this “fertility deficit” is a common symptom of the developed world, including Japan, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducted a comprehensive inquiry into its causes.

A significant finding was discovery of a three year increase in age of women’s first birth common to virtually all the OECD countries.  The OECD study then attempted to relate fertility rates to employment rates and educational attainment of women by cross-sectional analyses among OECD countries as of 1980, and again as of 1999, and found no statistically meaningful correlations.  The same analysis was again applied to divorce rates and share of births out of wedlock; again, no statistically defensible correlations were found.  Significant relationship was found for rising fertility versus higher youth employment rates, and lower fertility as age of singles living at home rise, based on 1999 data.

However, mere visual comparisons of the clusters of data displayed for 1980 versus 1999 showed that female employment rates, educational rates, and divorce rates, and share of out of wedlock births all had increased, while fertility rates plummeted.  It would appear that political correctness blinded the OECD analysts to the fact that correlation obviously existed for all of these variables.

What the OECD failed to investigate was the effects on fertility of the worldwide growth of the burden of government welfare states over the past three decades, with its extortionate increases in the burden of taxation upon families, and perverse effects of the welfare expenditures which these taxes funded.  Over the period of three decades 1970-2000 government spending for OECD nations grew one-tenth of GDP, while fertility rates plummeted by one-third.  Government spending growth on welfare growth of one-ninth of EU nations GDP accompanied a two-fifths decline in fertility.  The resultant increases in working women with a preference for less children or none at all, is clearly related.

The combined effects of reliable contraception and legalized abortion have probably had the most, if unquantifiable, direct contribution to the decline in fertility in the “developed nations”.  But the socialist states, with their false philanthropy based upon extortionate confiscations in pursuit of Utopia, have created a demand for these means of fertility abatement in a society where the denigration of marriage and family and religion and private property has largely destroyed the traditional motivations for having children, and the diminishing means for traditional families to afford them has been a major factor largely overlooked.

Focusing upon Europe, one finds EU governments’ spending accounts for nearly half of GDP, which more nearly amounts to sixty pence out of every Eurodollar when compared to personal income, two-thirds of which are welfare expenditures.  Government confiscations on this scale largely preclude personal savings of the middle class that enable economic independence.  But what the money is spent on has an even more malignant effect.

Take for example, the enigma as to why the Southern countries of the EU have even lower fertility than the EU average.  Greece, Spain, and Italy share this distinction, despite the same marriage rates and far lower divorce rates, and a religious and cultural bias toward families.  A disinclination toward social acceptance of unwed motherhood in these three countries is a principal contributant, since three out of every ten children are born out-of-wedlock in the EU, but only one out of ten for these countries.  Also, these countries have above EU average old age pensions relative to incomes, which promotes separation of the aged from the younger generations.  This may impede working to make children affordable (in Italy and Greece, with low female labor participation) or working women from having children (as in Spain, with high participation).  Since apart from cost of child care, working mothers in virtually all countries prefer family child care, the detachment of grandparents from the family as aids to child care  is a deterrent to childbearing.

It is an axiom of economics that one gets more of what one subsidizes, and less of what one taxes.  The perversity of the European social welfare state lies in the consequence of a lesser number of heavily taxed, economically efficient marriages, the preferred basis for child rearing; and more unwed motherhood, a difficult and socially inefficient (and socially unacceptable) basis for raising children; plus more self centered aged, dissociated from the greater family and child rearing.

In general it can be shown worldwide that the higher the expenditures of government, particularly on social welfare, and of resulting taxation relative to incomes, the lower the rates of marriage, higher the divorce rates, higher the proportion of unwed childbirth, and lower the fertility rates.  This is certainly true for the EU.  The Nordic countries (Finland, Norway, and Sweden) have reduced the scale of their welfare states, and fertility rates have significantly increased to above average EU 12 and OECD averages, but are still 15 percent below zero population growth fertility.  The barriers to marriage, such as no-fault divorce (particularly with children involved) and the prevailing consensus of postmodern feminism taken together with tax burdens have thus far not enabled any visible trend toward restoring the primacy of the married family.

The experience of the United States with the introduction of the welfare state under the Great Society commencing 1970 is instructive.  By 1993 government was spending $20,000 per individual 65 or older regardless of means, and $20,000 on every child in “poverty” (primarily the progeny of unwed mothers).  During that period, the real after tax income in constant dollars of the median married family failed to grow at all, despite 38% increase in productivity per hour worked and a 50% increase in hours worked by wives.  The whole benefit of the increase in the U.S. economy went to government and its beneficiaries.  Not surprisingly, unwed motherhood soared, while marriage and child rearing within marriages declined, and divorces rose.  The bumper stickers on the motor homes of the affluent aged which read “we’re spending our kids inheritance” should have also read “… and spending our unborn grandchildren’s share as well.”

The United States currently comprises less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet consumes one-fifth of world output.  How long can this continue if the productive and reproductive values are persistently undermined by welfarism, paid for by overseas borrowing that has transformed the United States from the world’s largest creditor to the largest debtor in the past two decades?

Since 1993 the demographics of the U.S. have shown positive signs.  The median married family income in real dollars had increased steadily as of year 2000, and federal tax burden declined.  In response the last few years marriage rates and marital fertility have leveled out, but have not retraced lost ground.  The divorce rate has declined.  The total fertility rate has risen back to 2.1, the zero population growth level, but unfortunately, the entirety of the improvement can be attributed to out-of-wedlock births, which have now stabilized at one-third of total births.  It remains to be seen if an increase of median married family incomes will further improve these vital statistics in the future.

The latest official projections for population of Europe published by Eurostat predict the arrival of negative “natural” growth of native Europeans by 2005, with “natural” population decreasing at an increasing rate thereafter.  Negative growth including net immigration is not expected until 2020.  An updated “low” forecast was not provided, but last year’s low forecast showed a possible decline of 20 percent by the year 2050 despite immigration.  The lowered “official” forecast extrapolated would arrive at 9 percent lower “natural” population by 2050.

A demographic study of Europe’s population prospects presented in Science magazine in March of 2003 suggests the Eurostat “official” forecast is over-optimistic.  If Europe maintains its current 1.5 fertility rate, its population decline will approach 25 percent by 2080.  Even if fertility rose immediately to zero population growth of 2.1 children per fertile mother, population would still decline until 2060 due to “negative momentum” resulting from the substantial decline in Europe’s proportion of fertile women compared to total population.

This is a dismal prospect, resulting in the “dependency ratio” (the ratio of workers to retirees) declining at an alarming rate.  It also poses problems for competitiveness, since a stagnant or declining economy makes it difficult to incorporate technological improvements when new capacity for productive output is not required.

Such prospects remind one of Dickens’ recount of Scrooge’s visitation to the future with the third ghost.  Is this scenario unavoidable, or remediable?

Since depopulation of a prosperous collection of nations on a voluntary basis is historically unprecedented, it is difficult to accept the conclusion that it is inevitable.  Like any good consultant facing the remediation of a failing enterprise, one must start with some simple questions.  What has changed from earlier times when performance was successful, and why?  What can be done to reestablish successful foundations?

The Europe that thrived and grew and prospered was founded upon family, religion, free enterprise, and individual responsibility.  The Europe that is decaying is founded upon socialist Utopianism based upon individualism, atheism, welfarism, and statism.

A recipe for regeneration must provide a revival of the proven values that work, and should include:

1. Restore primacy to marriage and family, and disavow the primary role of government as the true parent of the child, and the preferred husband of the woman.

2. Restore religion to the education of children, and to promotion of the family and morality, and allow it a respected role in society.

3. Encourage women to prefer child rearing to employment, and men to welcome the challenge of primary provider for the family.

4. Relentlessly reduce the role and cost of government to taxpayers, and particularly to families in order to allow them their rightful means to conduct their own lives without government interference.

5. Convert old-age pension and health care schemes to individualized and family savings accounts under the direction and ownership of each family and control of their own welfare.

6. End welfare schemes that subsidize unwed motherhood and the improvidence of the older generation at the expense of young families, and end the countries trade and fiscal deficits that mortgage our future.

7. Whether in social or tax law, stop denying marriages the rights of any other partnership and the obligations of any other contractual party.

This list is just a starter.  But it provides an agenda that is far closer to God’s will, human nature, and the natural order of a healthy society.  Anyone who knows and understands history would confidently expect that a new and revitalized Europe would be the consequence of such an agenda.  And the same can be said for the United States.

The socialist ideology has achieved its current hegemony from the gullibility of individuals who were told that confiscation for redistribution by government is social justice, when they knew better – rather,  that it is illegitimate plunder of private property.  Given that power, growth of government became irresistible, and the loss of private property rights was joined by the loss of rights to family, religion, and the heritage of freemen, as the growth of the nation states power to corrupt, led to unprecedented corruption.  The demographic implosions, the disintegration of families, the demise of religion, and the impending economic hegemony of Asia are the bitter fruits that Europeans will pay for their folly.

The same can be said for Americans.  The footprints of Karl Marx are stamped upon every page of its recent history.  The only antidote is severe curtailment of the excessive confiscations of government, returning to families the means and the time necessary to care for themselves and enjoy the fruits of their labor and freedom, plus a return to a culture that encourages motherhood, fatherhood, and lifetime families.