Posted on 01/28/2004 6:22:18 PM PST by Polycarp IV
Major Industrial Nations Unprepared for Coming Population Aging and Labour Shortage
The long-term price of aborting, contracepting, sexual revolution culture
DAVOS, Switzerland, January 28, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new report by the World Economic Forum in partnership with Watson Wyatt Worldwide has once again confirmed the coming population crisis that is to affect industrialized nations. The International Pension Readiness Report, released in time for the January 21-25, 2004 World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, underscores the disastrous effect that falling fertility rates are having throughout most of the world. Although a world-wide phenomenon, low fertility rates and a consequent decrease in labour force growth are especially alarming among industrialized nations.
Whereas the South-East Asia and Indian labour force will continue to grow in the next 30 years, the EU will see a decline in the labour force population from 208.7 million in 2000 to 151.2 million in 2050. During the same period, meanwhile, the number of people over the age of 60 in the EU will climb from 82.1 million to 125.1 million. Japan, with one of the world's lowest fertility rates, would have to increase its immigration rate 11-fold in order to maintain its labour force population.
The pension systems of the major industrialized nations will also be undermined, as a decimated labour force population combined with increased numbers of retirees cripples the countries' ability to afford pensions. For example, active workers in Italy will be outnumbered by retirees by 2030.
As for economic productivity, the EU's share of total global output will shrink by nearly half from today's 18 percent to ten percent in 2050, whereas Japan's share would decline by half from eight percent to four percent in the same period.
Richard Samans of the World Economic Forum said that "Economic output is determined by labour force growth and productivity rates. In countries with significant projected labour shortages, the supply of goods and services may not meet demand and standards of living."
Some of the solutions proposed in the report include: increased immigration; an extension of the retirement age; encouraging more women and younger workers to enter the workplace; and the export of capital and labour to other parts of the world where there are larger labour forces.
Sadly, no suggestion is made for incentives to encourage couples to have larger families. Nor is the abortion issue mentioned. In Canada alone since 1970, enough children have been killed through abortion to populate the city of Toronto. This figure does not take into account the much larger number of chemical and intrauterine abortions induced through the birth control pill (also an abortifacient) and intrauterine devices.
Sylvester Schieber, director of research at Watson Wyatt and co-author of the report, said that "[These] demographic changes present enormous challenges for developed countries."
See the detailed, full Watson Wyatt report at http://www.watsonwyatt.com/news/featured/wef/
Read the related LifeSiteNews.com coverage of one incentive for an increased birth rate in Italy at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/dec/03120307.html
Also read the related LifeSiteNews.com newsbyte which reveals that the number of people age 65 and older in the world has more than tripled over the past half-century at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2001/dec/011217.html
I guess he doesn't because he's sending as many jobs to the one-child Chinese who now have the worlds' fastest growing economy. The Chinese are actually doing quite a lot better than the Mexicans who are breeding faster than anyone. If just having a fast growing population was the factor, Mexico shouldn't be the disaster it is. It's fastest growing cities are skyrocketing in crime, they're being murdered almost faster than they can reproduce. I don't know but I would imagine Chinese cities have far less crime and better conditions.
Aging population causes problem. Immigration solves the problem?
"Kofi Annan calls for UN migration agency," By Peter Deselaers Inter Press Service, November, 2003
Annan's case was strongly backed by Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia University. Professor Bhagwati first propsed a World Migration Organization (WMO), similar to the World Trade Organization (WTO)or World Health Organization (WHO) about twelve years ago.
It would allow source countries to maintain its citizens loyality and tax their incomes while they work in the host country. Professor Bhagwati discusses his plan in "Borders Beyond Control" (http://bss.sfsu.edu/jmoss/resources/635_pdf/No_35_bhagwati.pdf)
Though Annan does not expect to create a UN migration agency during his term (which ends 2006) eventually "Nation states need to embrace multi-culturalism and deal with their fears about giving up homogeneity and narrow definitions about what constitutes a nationality."
The way I read this World Migration Organization movement we cannot expect "migrants" to help pay our bills.
I'm for large families --- the larger the better, but only those people who can feed and clothe their own children and properly educate their children. That usually means solid families which isn't where the extreme population growth is in Mexico --- there the educated middle class tends to have smaller families. The poor are just bringing child after child into poverty, abandoning many to the streets to fend for themselves at very young ages.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers, but they are not correct. The US is the only industrialized nation with a birth rate that is above the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple (although not by much). We were well below 2.0 for awhile in the 70's, but it has increased over the past two decades.
What is surprising is that much of the third world is rapidly approaching their replacment rate, and the trends indicate that world population may peak fairly soon and decline at an accelerating rate with unpredictable consequences (what happens land values when nobody is around to buy it?).
Regarding your comment about Mexicans: they are drawn to our jobs. I don't think they know or care what the birth rate is in the US and we should be happy they are here (as long as they're here legally and hold a job). The majority are hard workers and only looking for a better life, just like our ancestors, right? By the way, did you know that the fertility rate in Mexico is already at or below their replacment rate and falling, not rising? Mexico's population is still climbing fairly rapidly because of 'inertia' as women remain in their child bearing years for several decades, but this is a temporary situation unless their ferility rate increases soon. Ditto for much of the third world.
All of this may be good for the US as these immigrants will pay into the Social Security system, pension funds, etc., to support YOUR retirement, no?? Read Ben Wattenberg when you get a chance.
Sending a million over to the USA a year might behind that --- plus many of their street children have very short lives and gang violence and drug overdose is killing their teens and young adults.
I got my numbers from the 2001 article I posted in post #11. My reading on this subject has consistently shown that, if it weren't for current immigration levels, both legal and illegal, we would have a declining population base. In other words, Americans themselves are below replacement rates, but Americans PLUS immigrants puts us at slightly above replacement rates:
In Europe as a whole, the total fertility rate is about 1.4. ...In the USA it is still fractionally above replacement, helped by the relatively high fertility of Mexican-Americans and a large immigration programme.
*****
Regarding your comment about Mexicans: they are drawn to our jobs. I don't think they know or care what the birth rate is in the US and we should be happy they are here (as long as they're here legally and hold a job).
Its the low birth rate that creates the labor vaccuum, making the jobs they are filling here available.
I think we're on the same page here, IndyMac.
Our contraceptive and abortive culture is responsible, and most here contracept.
Thus you won't find many Americans willing to face up to these issues.
Us Catholics just sit back and smirk.
BTW, keep up the good work. I rarely have time anymore to post to FR, but I'm at least kept up to date on these issues due to your "conservative Catholic" pings.
Generally speaking, we, as a people, are not real good about accepting personal responsibility for our own actions, and we play word games to avoid facing those responsibilities.
The concept of "choice" versus "life" in the abortion issue is a perfect example...the people defending "choice" in the abortion issue, have self-imposed blinders, they will not admit that the "choice" was made at the moment that they engaged in an activity which normally leads to pregnancy, and what they call "choice", is the right to murder the result of their "choice" to conceive carelessly. In other words, they defend their right not to live by their choices, and to murder others to avoid any possibility of it.
In a moral country, populated with people who face up to the consequences of their choices in a responsible manner, there would be no need for legislation addressing the issue of abortion, because truly moral people would never entertain the idea of murdering a fetus.
Then, we moan and groan about the actions of the politicians in D.C., without once bothering to acknowledge that we sent them there, and I mean "we" as a people.
If we have a leftist-leaning government, it's because we sent an inordinate number of politicians with leftist ideals to D.C.
I'd rather have people using contraception, than demanding abortion "rights".
If folks contracept, they will abort.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the US Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade [U.S. decision to permit abortions] stated in some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception
for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.
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