Low Birth Rate Kills Economy

Low Birth Rate Kills Economy, Society, New Film Shows [Excerpts]

An extended adolescence that celebrates self-gratification at the expense of marriage and family is one of the main causes of the world's self-effacing population decline, according to the new film, "Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family."

"Demographic Winter" refers to the low birth rates, particularly in Western countries. "When there aren't enough young people to replace an aging population, we will experience economic collapse and social deterioration," the film contends.

Over the past few decades, it has become fashionable for young people, especially men, to put off marriage until later in life or to avoid it altogether, Kay Hymowitz, a scholar and noted author with the Manhattan Institute, explains in the film.

This is partly because women have become more career-minded and economically successful in recent years and are less inclined to have children as a result, she says. But there is also a certain unwillingness to enter adulthood and all its responsibilities that affects men disproportionately, Hymowitz argues.

"Men have a harder time growing up without women than women do growing up without men," she observes in the film.

No-fault divorce laws and a co-habitation mindset that sidestep the guarantees that come with marriage are identified in the film as major contributing factors behind the looming "demographic winter."

Statistics cited on the film's Web site, for instance, indicate that almost half of all marriages in the West are broken by divorce. Moreover, social scientists find that the children who grow up with divorced parents are less likely to marry and less likely to have children.

Young people who substitute co-habitation for marriage are also less inclined to have children. In parts of Europe co-habitation is becoming more the rule and less the exception. The number of co-habitation partners in Scandinavia, for example, nearly equals the number of married couples, census data show.

Longman sees hope for the future among those who hold religious worldviews and among young people especially.

"There is a self-correction side to this," Longman said. "Secularism correlates so strongly with childlessness that there is almost by default a shoring-up of the family with traditional values.

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