Slowly Dying Cultures

Childlessness On The Rise in Scandinavia

Overall Fertility Rates Falling

Not only are couples having fewer children, but there is an increase in the number of people who never have children at all. 

Virginia Hale
Breitbart News

Childlessness is becoming increasingly common in Scandinavia, according to new research.

A study by the Denmark-based Rockwool Foundation revealed that fertility rates in northern Europe are largely declining. Not only are couples having fewer children on average, but there is a distinct increase in the number of people who go through life without ever having children at all. 

Peter Fallesen, a senior researcher at the foundation, said there were a number of causes for the slump including that “society has, to a greater extent, lost its taste for having children”, but acknowledged there were likely economic reasons too. “We have fewer children during recessions, and it seems that the recession created by the financial crisis has become entrenched to some degree”, he said.

The research found that women born in the decade up to the year 1988 are expected to have an average of 1.82 children, a drop from the figure of 1.92 children per woman seen in females born in the ten years up to 1978.

According to the study’s projection’s, 21 per cent of women born in 1988 are likely to end up childless by the age of 45 compared to just 17 per cent of women born ten years earlier.

These figures echo findings reported by Newsweek last month in a piece on America’s falling fertility rate, which revealed that current trends mean many of today’s young women will end up involuntarily childless. The latest government figures in the United Kingdom, released this week, also show a similar picture, with fertility rates at their lowest since before the Second World War, and a third of births in the country coming to foreign-born mothers.

Dying Civilization

Fertility Falls in EU

Not ONE Country Hits Population Replacement Level

Victoria Friedman
Breitbart News

Total births in the European Union’s 28 member states in 2017 have fallen from the year before, while first-time mothers are now almost 30.

Figures released by Eurostat on Tuesday revealed that there were 5.075 million babies born in the union in 2017, compared with 5.148 million in 2016 with the total fertility rate standing at 1.59 births per woman — down from 1.60 on the year before and well below the 2.1 births per woman needed to maintain a population.

In terms of individual countries, France had the highest fertility rate at 1.90 births per woman, followed by Sweden (1.78), Ireland (1.77), Denmark (1.75), and the United Kingdom (1.74). 

The lowest fertility rates were in Malta (1.26), Spain (1.31), Italy and Cyprus (both 1.32), Greece (1.35), Portugal (1.38), and Luxembourg (1.39).

These figures reveal that not one of the 28 European Union countries came close to replacement level in 2017.

The Coming Dark Ages?

Can Russia Remain a Great Power?

Is its demographic predicament too large to overcome?

Marcus Roberts
Mercatornet


In the Second World War the people of the Soviet Union suffered enormously. By official counts (estimates) the number of Soviets who died was about 27 million people – an eighth of the pre-war population. Such a catastrophe continues to have effects through the decades. Fewer people after the war had fewer children, as these children grew up, they had fewer children and so on. Demographers call it a “wave” of population troughs and crests that undulate through the subsequent generations; its effects are still being felt in the successor states to the Soviet Union.

After Russia’s population stabilised at about 144 million people for about ten years (and was then boosted by the addition of over 2 million Crimeans – remember that?), it is once again shrinking as more Russians die than are born. Last year there was a decline in the number of Russian births by 11 percent. This decline in the number of births is set to continue: by 2032 the number of women in prime childbearing age is expected to decline by 28 percent from today’s figures, meaning that there will be fewer babies being born in the years ahead. Unless something drastic happens, the United Nations is expecting the Russian population to decline by 17 percent to 119 million by 2050.   

This state of demographic affairs is of concern to the newly re-elected Russian president, Vladimir Putin. As Bloomberg reports, Putin said that:

“‘Preserving the nation of Russia and the wellbeing of our citizens is the essence of everything,’ he said in his state of the nation address last month as a chart detailing the statistical “war echoes” loomed on a screen overhead. ‘Falling behind is the main threat. That’s our enemy.’”

In this speech to Parliament, Putin laid out a number of demographic and economic goals for his fourth term. These included propelling Russia into the top five economies. But he is battling some immense demographic headwinds.

Jabba The State Starving to Death

Rough Justice

The role of the modern State has developed into a wonder to behold.  It has been for some time our Nanny-in-Chief.  The evolution from Nanny into Jabba the State, however, has been relatively rapid.  The further it goes  the more grotesque and ineffective the State becomes.  A curse rests upon all those who are devotees and worshippers of Jabba--and their numbers are legion.

Evil integrates into the void.  It always does.  Not because of some static Natural Law, mind you.  It integrates into the void because evil is destructive, and when it matures it turns upon itself and destroys itself.  This self-immolation occurs because in the final analysis anything which rises up against the Creator of all cannot survive.  It will destroy itself.  It will be cast down.  The most just, fitting way of destroying evil is to ensure it destroys itself.

We see examples of this on every side.  Europe and the former Soviet Union have aborted themselves into a state of such population decline that it cannot now be rectified.  Both Europe and Russia cannot replace their own populations; the decline is irreversible.  The secularist societies they have sought to build are collapsing in upon themselves.  Think of Detroit--empty, vacant, and a shadow of its former self--as a symbol of what Europe and the former Soviet Union are  becoming.  The only way to prevent it is to open up the borders to mass immigration, in the hope that migrants will fill the population gaps.  Hence Chancellor Merkel's unwavering commitment to the course of open borders.  There is no other option available.  Eventually, then, Europe will become Islamic.  It will see this as a way of "salvation".  The very things in which Europe has glorified  have led to its destruction.  Jabba's curse comes to pass.

The curse of integrating into the void happens on a macro-scale.  But it also happens on a micro-scale.

The Childless Androgyny: The End of Europe and the Last Man

The Tragedy of the European Family

Ted Malloch
BreitbartLondon

Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected French president, has no children; German chancellor Angela Merkel has no children.  British prime minister, Theresa May has no children; Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni has no children; Holland’s, prime minister, Mark Rutte, Sweden’s Stefan Löfven, Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel, and Scotland’s, first minster, Nicola Sturgeon — all have no children.

The list goes on…Latvia’s childless president is Raimonds Vējonis, Lithuania’s childless president is Dalia Grybauskaitė and Romania’s childless president is Klaus Werner Iohannis. And, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission too, has no children and is family-less.

So to put it rather bluntly: a grossly disproportionate number of the people making serious decisions about Europe’s future have no direct personal sibling, child or grandchildren’s interests at stake in that future. They are not part of a family and have come to see all their attention focused on one dominant and all-powerful social unit to which they pay obeisance and give their complete and devoted attention: The State.

The demographics look problematic. Among native Europeans, the birthrate is currently between 0.2 and 1.1. Europe is not replicating itself and will, if trends are extrapolated—cease to exist.

The European Problem

Drinking Sea Water to Overcome Thirst

We continue to muse over whether Europe will ever survive as a union of states--with a Federal bureaucracy holding final and absolute power.

It is doubtful that it will.  Hungary is now setting an increasingly independent course--independent, that is, from the "Europe with no borders" commitment of Angela Merkel and the reigning bureaucracy in Brussels.  The way the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban puts it, the nations of Europe should, on the one hand, be thoroughly committed to European values, while, on the other, it must (therefore) close its borders to the migrant horde.

In Orban's view, there is an evil empire operating within Europe, tearing it apart from the inside.  And that empire is both led and controlled by another Hungarian, one George Soros.

Immigrants or Cultural Suicide

The Infertility Trap

The sad reality is that Europe needs immigration to "survive" as a civilisation.  Demographic realities progress very slowly.  Like the frog in a heating pot, they do not present an immediate crisis to focus the mind.  Nor do they admit quick fixes.  Demographic catastrophes, when they arrive, are too late to stop.  They cannot be corrected--at least not in the short term--if ever.

Europe is in the midst of a looming demographic crisis.   In general terms, the civilisation that is Europe has decided that it is chic and culturally correct to have small families, few children. Consequently, Europe is not producing enough children to sustain its culture or civilisation.

For a society to remain the same size, the average woman needs to have 2.1 children in a lifetime (the so-called "total fertility rate").  All European countries except Muslim Albania are well below it.   There is a "safe zone" above 1.6 children per woman, where population declines are gradual and easily reversed.  Below that, population tends to collapse rather than decline.  A society that maintains a 1.8 total fertility rate will be 80% as large at the end of a century;  a society with a total fertility of  1.3 (Italy, Spain, Eastern Germany and the Baltic nations are such societies) will fall to a quarter of its size.

At current rates of decline, Italy's native population will be half its current size by the middle of this century little more than a generation from now.  [Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West (New York: The Penguin Group, 2009), p.13.]

We can assume, therefore, that one reason why European authorities are sanguine about admitting huge numbers of immigrants is their understanding of these demographic realities.

It's Time for Another, Genuine Cultural Revolution

The Good Old Days

China is finding out that you cannot just turn babies off-and-on.  The government was hailed for recently easing the draconian restrictions upon married couples to just one child.  It was a start, but a stuttering beginning, at best.  The social dislocation in Chinese society from the One Child Policy will take decades, generations to redress and put right.  

A recent article in Epoch Times describes how nothing much has changed in a town lauded for its adherence to, and its disciplined alacrity over, carrying out the former "one child" policy.

In the 1980s, the county of Rudong in China’s coastal province of Jiangsu was lauded for its strict adherence to China’s infamous one child policy. Three decades later, the county’s residents are paying the price of the Chinese regime’s efforts at population control.  Rudong County has come under scrutiny recently for having negative population growth for 17 straight years, and for having a rapidly aging populace, according to a report by the semi-official Beijing News on March 29. And the county’s residents haven’t taken to recently instituted pronatalist measures.

The problem is that a social cluster (such as a town) eventually reaches the tipping point of death--the point at which it is not possible to rebuild the town or area.  Like other cities and regions throughout history, living there becomes too hard, or costly, or inconvenient and people move.  The city or town dies.  That's what is happing in Rudong now.

Withering on the Vine

The Demographic Time Bomb is Most Marked in Japan

The demographic time bomb – whereby the elderly population assumes a greater and greater proportion of the total population - is no more marked than in Japan.

Falling birth rates (as a result of abortion, contraception and delaying childbirth) and increasing longevity as a result of better medical care have created this situation.

If we look at the population age structure in Japan (see graph above) we can see how dramatically its shape has changed since 1950 and how much more it will change by 2050.

The same trends are spelt out numerically in the table below where different countries are compared.

Unless something is done to reverse the demographic trends, ‘economic necessity’, together with the ‘culture of death’ ideology which is becoming more openly accepted, may well mean that the generation that killed its children through abortion will in turn be killed by its own children through euthanasia.

The population pyramid of 1950 shows that Japan had a standard-shaped pyramid marked by a broad base. The shape of the pyramid, however, has changed dramatically as both the birth rate and death rate have declined.

In 1950 the population of elderly citizens (65 years and over) accounted for just 4.9% of the total population. This had risen to 21.5% by 2007 and will rise to 39.6% by 2050.

The Odd Couple

Asininity and Contumacy

Here's a different take.  A geneticist, who is also an atheist, has argued that Christianity could well triumph over atheism.  Naturally, he employs both genetic arguments to develop the proposition.  This, from The  Telegraph:

Christianity will rise as sceptics die out, geneticist claims

Growth of Christianity in Africa coupled with population decline in Europe will trigger new resurgence of the religion, UCL academic claims 

The world could see a resurgence of Christianity driven by population decline in sceptical countries, the geneticist Steve Jones has claimed. Professor Jones said history had proven that religion grows rapidly during large population booms, particularly in poorer countries. He argued that rapid growth in Africa could spark a new resurgence of major religions like Christianity.

However in increasingly atheist countries in Europe people are no longer reproducing in sufficient numbers to avoid population decline, he told the Hay Literary Festival. “Britain is the only country in Europe that’s replacing its population,” said Prof Jones.

Might there be a causal connection between atheistic cultures and population decline?