Low fertility in Europe -- is there still reason to worry?

RAND Corporation ^ | June 17, 2011 | Unknown

[Tax-chick]

I hope you’re right about a general trend toward a higher birthrate, rather than isolated data points. It’s not unusual for very religious families in the US to have many children, but there aren’t enough, as a percentage of the population, to affect the average very much.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Name me a nation in the present or past that did not become secular or materialist as its prosperity rose.

Not every man in the Middle East is having 50 children because the gap between rich and poor is very wide. They are commanded by Allah to have as many children as possible as new recruits for the jihad against the planet.

Even today Saudi Arabia has a national fertility rate of only 3.0 whereas the USA is at 2.1.

[WashingtonSource]

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[kearnyirish2]

Well, the secular part is easiest: the Gulf states have resisted secular influences as they’ve become the wealthiest nations on the earth. If anything, they’ve become increasingly religious.

As far as the materialistic part, I think you have to ask yourself which came first, the chicken or the egg? I personally see a noticeable decline in my standard of living as a result of having children, and have always understood that was the price (having come from a large family myself). The “prosperity” rose as breeding tapered off; we now have a whole segment of forty- to sixty- year-olds griping about the invasion of foreigners without realizing their own contribution to this issue.

When societies choose new cars over new children, they aren’t long for this world (see western Europe, as well as the US WASP culture for examples). The secular, materialistic way of life in the US isn’t being overthrown in some violent invasion of darker people from the south; it is being bred (or rather, not bred) into extinction on its own. Who do you think is having the lion’s share of the 2.1 children in the US?

[MinorityRepublican]

bttt