Dawn of a Brighter Day?
4th April 2024
When I was growing up, most families I knew had four children. More, if they were Catholics. That is one of the fundamental ways in which our society has changed: today, people generally have fewer children. And now, if you show me a family with four children, I will lay heavy odds that they are Republicans.
In the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds writes about the fact that the world needs more babies. Beginning in the 1960s, fueled in part by the prophecies of Paul Ehrlich, an entomologist who had an almost unbroken record of being wrong about everything, fears grew of a population explosion. Governments tried to reduce fertility, but in the West, social trends no doubt contributed more to the ensuing baby bust.
Today, most countries outside of Africa face an uncertain future due to a lack of fertility.
It’s not a lack of fertility–people can still have as many kids as they want to. The problem is that far fewer want to. Children used to be an economic benefit, but now they are merely an expense, an expense that increasingly only the relatively rich can afford.