But as Jonathan Last documents in his new book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As Last writes, “Throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by Very Bad Things.” Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource.

…

Finally, foreign policy will increasingly be impacted by the global decline in fertility. Those who fear China as a future superpower threat to our interests should remember that by 2050, China’s population will be declining by 20 million every five years, and one out of four people will be over the age of 65. China’s public pension system covers only 365 million people and is unfunded by 150 percent of GDP. What we need to prepare for “is not a shooting war with an expansionist China,” Last writes, “but a declining superpower with a rapidly contracting economic base and an unstable political structure. It’s not clear which scenario is more worrisome.”

Let us not forget the other rapidly aging and shrinking superpower, Russia. It has a fertility rate of 1.3, and an average life expectancy of 66 years. By 2050, its population will be a third smaller than it is today. Russia’s current global belligerence under Vladimir Putin in part reflects the fact that, as Last writes, “the country has very little to lose.” A “wounded bear,” as Last calls Russia, armed with nuclear weapons is likely to remain a serious font of global disorder.

The Coming Demographic Crisis | Hoover Institution

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded?

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.

It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, it’s already started. Japan, for instance, will be half its current size by the end of the century. In Italy, there are already more deaths than births every year. China’s One-Child Policy has left that country without enough women to marry its men, not enough young people to support the country’s elderly, and an impending population contraction that has the ruling class terrified.

And all of this is coming to America, too. In fact, it’s already here. Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals don’t even go that far—they have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it weren’t for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too.

What happened? Everything about modern life—from Bugaboo strollers to insane college tuition to government regulations—has pushed Americans in a single direction, making it harder to have children. And making the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster: Jonathan V. Last: 9781594036415: Amazon.com: Books

Amazon.Com comment:

94 of 98 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars

The lamps are going out in maternity wards all over the world, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime… February 4, 2013
By L.B.
Format:Hardcover

Having just finished this well-written and sobering look at fertility decline and the coming population implosion both here and abroad, I’m tempted to paraphrase Sir Edward Grey’s famous remark on the eve of the First World War: “The lamps are going out in maternity wards all over the world, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime…” Contrary to the worries of the overpopulation crowd, we’re simply not having enough babies, due to what the author describes as a “giant constellation” of factors — and the likely consequences of this global baby bust are grim.

Demographics can be a tricky subject to write about, and difficult to read about. But have no fear — Mr. Last lays out the facts and data about our demographic & fertility dilemma clearly and thoroughly (and in under 200 pages sans footnotes!); he teases out the implications of these facts judiciously; and he does it all with enough dark humor and interesting vignettes to make the demographic medicine go down easy. (One fascinating example: He notes that last year in Japan — a nation well-advanced in a demographic death spiral — consumers bought more adult diapers than diapers for babies, for the first time ever. Let that nugget sink in for a minute.) Mr. Last is clear-eyed about the probable consequences of population decline, and he does a fine job showing its likely effects on everything from the unsustainability of our entitlement programs to foreign policy to American economic growth and innovation — while always cautioning that Demography is not inevitably Destiny.

No doubt some will assume the author wants to pin blame on feminism, or on selfish women who sacrifice motherhood for careers. I would respectfully ask such persons to read the book with an open mind, because Mr. Last does no such thing. In fact, he goes out of his way to say that our birth dearth results not from some sinister anti-family conspiracy, but from a whole variety of causes, many of them unquestionable goods (e.g., the decline in infant mortality rates, the greater career opportunities available to women, even something as mundane as child car-seat laws). But as he notes, even net goods like these can come at a broader social cost.

Certainly, Mr. Last doesn’t shy away from discussing the real effects on fertility of things like the invention of the birth-control pill, or the rise of cohabitation and no-fault divorce (and their negative effect on marriage) — and he makes no secret of his own (conservative) views on these topics. But as another reviewer noted above, he scrupulously refrains from preaching on these matters. In fact, he’s even willing to highlight data suggesting, for example, that abortion might not reduce fertility rates nearly as much as you’d think. His intellectual honesty shines through on every page of the book.

Mr. Last concludes with a chilling observation: Our looming demographic crisis shows that after a century of trying, we have still not figured out “how to balance liberalism, modern economics, and family life.” Resolving this conundrum is a matter of utmost importance for America and for all nations in the 21st century. “What to Expect…” is a much-needed conversation-starter on this topic, and a lucid and engaging tour through our increasingly barren landscape (if you’ll pardon the pun!).