Population Decline: An Impending Threat to Your Future

Is population decline an impending threat to your future?

On Nov 16, 2022, the World Population Review published a report on the state of Lithuania, a small nation on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania is one of a great number of nations whose population is in a serious state of decline. The data is quite telling:

Lithuania Population Clock:

• Lithuania Population (as of Nov 16, 2022) -> 2,735,784
• Births per Day -> 72
• Deaths per Day -> 132
• Migrations out per Day -> 42
• Net Change per Day -> -102

This amounts to a net loss of one person every 14 minutes.

The same scenario is being played out over most of Europe and many of the nations of the developed world. The Asia Times, in an article entitled "Population decline: A coming global crisis" (July 29, 2020), shows the extent of the problem on a more global basis. While global population has been growing steadily from 2.6 billion in 1950 to 8 billion in 2022, an end to this growth is projected. The number of births per woman, generally referred to as "fertility rate," is in steep decline across the developed world. In 1950 each woman would give birth to 4.7 children. In 2017 the global average was 2.37. 2.1 children per woman is what is needed to keep population stable. It is projected that by 2100 the global average will be 1.7, which means a declining global population.

Already in the Arab Gulf states it is dropping with the Gulf Cooperation group averaging a fertility rate of only 1.84, Saudi Arabia is at 1.67, Kuwait 1.42 and the UAR is at 1.31. The article quotes a University of Washington study in which:

They predict that by 2050, 151 nations will not be producing enough babies to sustain their populations. By 2100, it will be 183 nations and the populations of 23 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Spain and the UAE, will have more than halved. (Population decline: A coming global crisis - Asia Times

Some welcome this development, thinking that it relieves the pressure on the world's resources, but this issue needs to be thought through a bit further. As the number of births fall, the number of elderly continues to increase.

Canada, while it has a low natural fertility rate, augments population growth with a high rate on immigration. Still however, there is a problem down the road. A study by the Fraser Institute (May 2022) showed a key area of concern that is a consequence of a low natural fertility rate even in Canada.

In 1965 14.1% of the population was over the age of 65. By 2050 that percentage will be 25% of total population. To put this another way, the study noted that:

• In 1966 there were 7.7 working-age individuals for each senior citizen (over 65).
• In 2022, there are 3.4 working-age people per senior.
• By 2068, the ratio will be 2.3 per senior.

Functionally it means that today, there are only half as many working people to support a senior as there were 50 years ago. This has all manner of consequences. The shrinking ratio means potentially excessive tax burdens will be placed on those still employed to maintain services in health care and senior support. Pension plans are at risk of being underfunded, or being dropped altogether.

There is also a problem with labour shortage, which is already a factor in Canada's society, especially in support services in hospitals and care centers. Tax revenue shortfalls prevent the hiring of skilled medical staff.

As youth populations decline, so does the enrollment in education programs at the public education and post-secondary levels. Many of these programs are already suffering from revenue shortages, and contraction of these facilities will be consequential. People may need to get used to not having services, retail or professional, as close to them as before, as locations close due to lack of demand. Fewer consumers create less demand for production and the economy shrinks.

There are many factors that have contributed to the matter. Quite simply put, fewer young people mean a loss of economic activity and a loss of wealth creation capacity, eventually leading to the slow and painful death of cultures and civilizations.

While it may be the unpopular thing to express, it is nonetheless true that the past 50 years have seen a war against the traditional family. This has, more than any other factor, reduced the birthrate. The present society demeans marriage between a man and a woman, fills the airwaves with rhetoric attacking the traditional family and overtly promotes newly invented definitions of gender. Massive pressure is especially put on schools to indoctrinate children in these new norms. Thus social stability is disrupted leading to lower fertility rates. This is without mentioning the effect of abortion as a birth control measure which reduces the number of young people who could enter the economy by about 500 000 every 5-6 years in Canada alone.

If we are to retain a stable social structure that has a future, including economic prosperity as a goal, perhaps one can take note of the comment from a bestselling Canadian author, William Gairdner, when he wrote:

I am persuaded that the health of our entire civilization depends not on the autonomous individual, and certainly not on the State, but on the family, which lies between these two things and is our prime value generating entity and source of freedom, privacy and meaning. That meaning - and the importance and privileged status of the family – is being eroded before our very eyes. And it is happening not because people do not care – they do, and passionately – but because they have lost touch with the arguments and values necessary for its defence (William D. Gairdner, The War Against the Family, 1992, p. xiii).

Population decline is a serious threat to our collective future. Please take time to view our Tomorrow's World program Fewer Babies: Death of a Way of Life You will find the link in the description below.