It's positively haunting to walk through some of the nearly abandoned towns and villages of Italy. There's one place that we like to go wandering in the mountains where perhaps thirty people live in a place that used to be home to hundreds. In several visits, we've never seen a single sign of a child outside any of the habitations that aren't abandoned yet.Everything presented in this commentary and the linked article from Mark Steyn is anecdotal. There is absolutely no attempt to verify the facts or to link this issue to larger social or economic causes. Are the kids really missing? Are they kept inside as they are in the US for fear of stranger danger? Do they choose to be inside playing on their computers and Wiis? What are the economic realities and financial penalties faced by parents? How does this compare to populations in urban areas?
Didn't the vision of a humanity without children used to belong to dark and dystopian sci-fi?
As far as I can tell, the entire discussion is just white panic and thinly-veiled neo-Nazi rhetoric.
My other question is: why is it assumed that demographics win out? Aren't the most populous countries also the poorest? Isn't it true that the west has only gotten richer and more productive as population growth has declined? Aren't replacement numbers a little out-of-date in this era of post-industrialization and knowledge based jobs. And aren't countries like India and China going to face the same pressures to spend more resources on fewer children as farmers and factory workers give rise to Doctors and Engineers? Doesn't the same hold for immigrant groups as they adjust to the realities of life in the US and Europe?
The fact is that the decline in population growth says more about the success of the west socially and economically and is in no way a sign that the end is near.
(Oh, and I hate the fact that Vox Popoli and I both use the same Blogger template -- I think it's time for a change!)
