To purchase the entire Summit Lecture Series, Vol. 1 on DVD, go to: summit.org.
When I say “demographics” and the impact demographics is making on the decline of Western Civilization, I essentially mean our “birth rate”; or how many babies does a couple need to have, on average, in order to keep their country or civilization going? At the very least, each couple needs to have at least two children in order to replace the husband and wife. I say “very least”, because the number actually goes up in order to replace those adults who either cannot or choose not to have babies. Therefore, a sustainable birthrate needs to be somewhere between 2.1-2.4, according to statisticians.
I know it’s almost nonsensical to talk about .4 of a baby… but we’re talking demographics and statistics here. The more accurate birthrate needs to be around 2.4, according to Bernard Lewis who was one of the first to raise alarm about this nearly twenty years ago. But, the United Nations says 2.1.
However, all across Europe, there is not a single country whose birth rate tops 1.5.
The only exception is France who recently added several financial incentives to encourage people to have babies. After World War II, they made similar efforts to repopulate their nation and it seemed to work for them, so now they essentially provide an enormous amount of free health care, day care, nearly a year of paid maternity leave, plus an actual cash gift is given to each family who has a baby from the government. All these financial incentives have raised France’s birth rate to about 1.7.
The Scandinavian countries’ birth rates tend to hover around 1.3, and they’ve been there for quite some time. One recent year, Germany boasted a birth rate of only 0.8. Japan has had a 0.8 decade! If this trend continues, Japan will see its population cut in half from generation to generation. The one spike that Europe has recently seen came from Britain, taking them to a 1.9.
While these Western countries (and Japan) are not having babies, which ones are?
Many people think of China in this context, but that’s not actually correct. You see, China thought they had a population 40 years ago, so they implemented their “One Child” policy. With strict enforcement, parents by and large decided to keep the babies they thought would be most productive, so they kept their sons and aborted their daughters. A generation later, they now have a whole lot of men who cannot find wives. It’s been projected that by the year 2020, there will be over 24 million Chinese men who will not be able to find wives. And that’s just statistically, not taking into account social and relational issues that might hinder many men from finding wives even if the numbers were stacked in their favor.
And what is sociologically damaging with this is the fact that men need wives in order to be domesticated. The hard truth is that men – without women in their lives – do stupid things. Being married forces a man to think about other people, their responsibilities, and the future. Without marriage, most men merely live for themselves and the present moment. Across a society, as in China’s case, this translates into a rise in violent crime, sex trafficking, and unnecessary and unprovoked “war and conquest” behaviors both internally and internationally.
(File this under “all ideas have consequences”)
The flip side of all this is the fact that most Islamic countries are having babies when these other countries are not. Even though their birth rate is curbing down from a few years ago, it is still between 5 to 8 in many Islamic countries!
Even within Europe’s borders – take England for example – Islamic British couples have three times as many babies, on average, than non-Islamic couples. So, one of the most popular boy’s names in London now is Muhammad.
This is what I mean by “demographics”.
Next week, we’ll dive into why countries within Western Civilization are not having babies, and the effects of the unforeseen consequences of this phenomenon.