Free Republic

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=124272 On "Forbes on Fox" on Jan. 30, 2010, the discussion turned to how population is affecting the U.S. economy. The panelists and Steve Forbes agreed that the USA needs more babies. The No. 1 variable affecting our economy today is the decision by our government, from the late 1960s to 1985, to promote zero-population growth, with the number of births decreasing. The birthrate fell from 2.3 children per family to 1.3 at times. To maintain a population, a birthrate of 2.1 children is required. That decreased birthrate has impacted everything from demand for products to health-care costs to relaxed...

Demographics & Depression David P. Goldman First Things, May 2009 Three generations of economists immersed themselves in study of the Great Depression, determined to prevent a recurrence of the awful events of the 1930s. And as our current financial crisis began to unfold in 2008, policymakers did everything that those economists prescribed. Following John Maynard Keynes, President Bush and President Obama each offered a fiscal stimulus. The Federal Reserve maintained confidence in the financial system, increased the money supply, and lowered interest rates. The major industrial nations worked together, rather than at cross purposes as they had in the early...

Tell you wives no more excuses (I'm not being sexist here, men are always in the mood). We need to have more children brought up to love Gods word and what He has given them.

Over the past 35 years we have been waiting longer and playing the field more before settling down. According to the Office for National Statistics, men are getting married for the first time seven years later and women six years later. This means that the average man is aged 32 when he asks “Will you marry me?” and the average woman is 29 when she says “Yes”. But is this trend towards the thirtysomething marriage making us happier and more satisfied? And when it comes to the fortysomething crunch - the most common age for divorce - who is most...

Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family. That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can't explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears. The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic "Family and Civilization," which has just been republished in an edited version by...

Jerry Syrovatka says that at 51 he can still run circles around his 8-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. But who knows how long that will last? The Weston Ranch resident is part of a growing phenomenon among baby boomers: men who father children well past the age of 40. "I'm in construction, so I can keep up with the big guys and the little guys," Syrovatka said. "I still got the old spunk in me." There's a joy to fatherhood no matter when someone has a child, but many Americans are waiting longer. Research shows the percentage of married men...

As more Americans decide not to have children and boomers are living longer, we are becoming a more adult-centered nation. Kids just aren't as big a part of American life as they used to be. Americans' child-free years are expanding as empty-nest seniors live longer and more young adults delay -- or skip -- childbearing. In 1960, nearly half of all households had children under 18. By 2000, the portion had fallen to less than a third, and in a few short years it's projected to drop to a quarter, according to a report from the National Marriage Project. Suburban...

Regular readers will recall that we are on the verge of a population problem. Fertility rates have been falling across the globe, and in nearly every industrialized country are already below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Despite the appearance of a world bursting at the seams with an ever-greater number of people, the current growth rate is slowing and the world's population is likely to peak about nine billion and then begin contracting - precipitously - by 2080. Regular readers also will recall that there are convincing, if not certain, reasons to suspect that population contraction could...

Worries about a population explosion have been replaced by fears of decline The population of bugs in a Petri dish typically increases in an S-shaped curve. To start with, the line is flat because the colony is barely growing. Then the slope rises ever more steeply as bacteria proliferate until it reaches an inflection point. After that, the curve flattens out as the colony stops growing. Overcrowding and a shortage of resources constrain bug populations. The reasons for the growth of the human population may be different, but the pattern may be surprisingly similar. For thousands of years, the number...

The grey tsunami is growing and in 10 years it's expected that Canada's aging population will hit our workforce with a potentially devastating flood of retirements, leaving employers scrambling for younger workers who simply don't exist. The undertow, if you will, of this wave of baby boomers hitting freedom 65, is the economically stifling effects of inflation, worsening productivity and a smaller tax pool to pay for all of those artificial hips and other expensive social programs already straining under the weight of the ever-building wave of old folks requiring exponentially more medical care and pension payouts. Statistics Canada's latest...

Contradictory messages about women's fertility are breeding like rabbits this week. In largely-Catholic Brazil, the government is subsidizing birth control pills so poor women can afford the contraceptive, despite a recent visit by Pope Benedict XVI, who mainly used his time to condemn abortion, contraception and sex outside marriage. In China, officials are rounding up rural, pregnant women and conducting forced abortions to enforce the mandatory one child policy. In Canada, on the other hand, I'm the problem. Thirty-something. Childless. And a threat to Canada's future economic well being. The nation's fertility rate has plummeted to 1.53 children per woman,...

It is not the desire to further careers but money worries and the search for Mr Right which are holding women back from having children, according to a poll out today. Many are also having too much fun, although a significant number admit to stressing about their fertility, it found. The study of 1,800 child-free women, for Grazia magazine, reveals that having children is lowest on the list of life priorities for 45 per cent of 28- to 32-year-olds. More than half (51 per cent) of those aged 24 to 27 and a third of 28- to 32-year-olds say they...

The Population Research Institute says the Western world is facing a crisis as virtually every country has birth rates well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.Hear This Report A pro-family organization has done extensive research into birth rates around the world and has concluded that if the Western world wants to survive, it better start having more children. The Population Research Institute (PRI) says virtually every Western or Westernized nation on the planet is slowly dying off because birth rates have fallen below the 2.1-child-per-woman replacement level. PRI spokesman Joseph D'Agostino says for the most part, only...

Laura Bennett isn't bound by convention. Professionally, at age 42, she's pursuing a mid-career switch into big-time fashion design. At home, she's a mother of five -- with No. 6 due next month. "It was nothing that we planned ahead of time," Bennett says. "It's more that we were enjoying all the kids. "We have a happy home. Why not have as many children as we can?" It's barely a blip on the nation's demographic radar -- 11 percent of U.S. births in 2004 were to women who already had three children, up from 10 percent in 1995. But there...

The fears that deter young couples from starting a family have been revealed in a report published today. The study, carried out by the Future Foundation into the reasons why Britain's birth rate has tumbled since the end of the 1960s baby boom, found financial pressures were the greatest inhibition. It found that two-thirds of a sample of childless adults under the age of 45 said they were delaying having children until they could save enough to afford them. Half were postponing having a family until they could move to a bigger home. The foundation said this fear was well...

From the moment a baby girl is born, her fertility clock begins the countdown. Though she has millions of eggs in her immature ovaries, by the time she's a woman, the viability of those eggs has already started to diminish. By age 40, her chances of conceiving have declined, while her chances of having a child with chromosomal abnormalities have increased. And if she's like thousands of women in their 30s who have yet to meet Mr. Right and whose careers and personal choices don't include, for now, child rearing, she may find herself wishing that should could freeze time....

Senior citizens are leaving the labor force sooner than they did 50 years ago, even though they are living longer, healthier lives, according to a landmark analysis of census data released Thursday. This is one of several surprising findings in the report on aging, which comes as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. The oldest baby boomers turn 60 this year, and the new report suggests that many of them already have left the labor force. The report attributes the declining work rate among older Americans to the growth in private pensions and Social Security and Medicare benefits....

Britain's baby drought is fast becoming one of this country's most pressing long-term problems. A new think tank report reveals that, while some women are happy to remain childless, others are desperate to conceive. It's just that the problems of juggling motherhood and a career are becoming intolerable When Julie Kendall walked down the aisle at the age of 26, it was always with the idea that some day she would be a mother. At that age there was no obvious hurry. Both she and her husband were keen to establish careers; her own mother had urged her not to...

THE Australian family is under attack: not from an evil outside force intent on destroying a wholesome way of life, but from a none-too-subtle shift in values between generations. Whereas the boomers were great supporters of mum, dad and the kids, later generations of Xers and now Ys are clearly less enamoured with family life, at least in youth. If there is a place for the traditional nuclear family in modern Australia it has been relegated to the late 30s and early 40s wasteland. In 1991, 41 per cent of all Australian households featured a traditional nuclear family. This proportion...

Children are the new focus between the haves and the have-nots, Australia is producing the smallest generation of children we have ever seen, relative to total population. While we debate the implications of this for our ecology, our economy and our immigration policy, spare a thought for the children themselves. They will be living in a world of bewildering mixed messages. Their overzealous parents will be lavishing attention on them, praising their every achievement as if they are superheroes, yet protecting them as if they are fragile and incompetent. Meanwhile, there'll be a growing band of non-parents out there who...