Killed by Prosperity

Almost everywhere in the world, prosperous people are having too few babies.

The fertility rate – the number of children produced by the average woman during her lifetime – is too low. To maintain the population, the rate must be 2.1. At 2.0, the U.S. is close. Northern Europe, at about 1.8, isn’t bad, but Southern Europe, including Germany, is under 1.5. India is a stellar 2.5, but China, hindered by a one-child policy, is only 1.6. Japan and Singapore are a disastrous 1.2.

The children of old-time farmers served as farm hands and counted as assets. But the children of prosperous urban dwellers are costly liabilities. For women, college degrees, full-time jobs, the pill, marriages later in life (or never) all create a dearth of births. As developing nations become prosperous, their birth rates, too, will fall.

Entitlement programs, including Social Security, face bankruptcy, because the benefits to numerous older beneficiaries are paid by too-few younger workers.

Human beings may eventually expire and be replaced by robots. By that time, robots will have judgment, common sense, and even a sense of humor. That’ll be quite a Darwinian twist.