Doomed ?

If you really want to be depressed about the state of the nation, and need an illustration of the total triumph of the 60s agenda, don't go to the Guardian. After all, you expect Guardianistas at the Guardian.

No, the Daily Mail's the place where you see the cultural damage in full effect. Remember that these are about the nearest thing to 'the good guys' that we've got in the UK, once you get beyond a select few. Your average Mail commenter hasn't had them removed like his Guardian counterpart - but totally accepts the idea that "what's good for me now" is pretty much the only criterion to live by. For example, the paper's readers are pro-euthanasia and anti-religion - the latter subject you can argue about, but on euthanasia can't Mail readers put two and two together?

Here's a childless (by choice) Sharon Parsons (editor of Top Sante, whate'er that may be - nay, I lie, she's just been replaced), telling us 'I don't need a child to be happy'.

"...it seems to me that those with a family often have more tangible stages punctuating their lives: there's the day they become parents; later, they may become grandparents; and inbetween there are all the defining events that will be remembered and celebrated, such as the one my friend was enjoying so much, the marriage of her child.

Perhaps, in a few years, she will also see the birth of her first grandchild and another chapter of that particular family's life will begin as their lineage continues onward into the future. It's something people like me will never know.

And that - for me, at least - is a jolting part of being childless. However pretentious it may sound, there's the startling fact that my husband and I have severed the thread in our personal ancestry (unless, of course, he should decide to run off with a fertile 20-something).

Despite our respective nephews and nieces taking up the family baton, he and I know that we are not passing anything of ourselves on to future generations.

After an infinite genealogical timeline - impossible to imagine - we have drawn the mark in the sand. Enough. No more. Our bloodline stops here."

Hmm. Very Lionel Shriver. What's impressive are the best-rated and worst-rated comments.

"There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with a woman choosing not to have children." +784

"It had nothing to do with my career, finding a partner, wanting to do things before having children. I just didn't want them." +572

"Children are supposed to look after you when you're old - if you bring them up well." -678

"I have 4 children aged from 16yrs - 10 months. I have an unconditional love for them and they fill my life with happiness. I am blessed. I will reach the age of 50 and be surrounded in love.." -373 (I've reached the age of 50 and am surrounded by bickering - takes all sorts - LT).

"Now with the spending cuts and more old single people ending up in hospital, who is going to make sure they eat the bad food they are given. The nurses don't have time or care to be frank. What I am saying is, when you women who have chosen not to have children are old, infirm and in hospital, whose gonna look after you? Forget the government they are not going to help. Bet by then you'll be wishing you had children to care for you." -367

Once again, these people seem incapable of reading the news and putting two and two together. While you can never be sure that you won't end up feeling like King Lear did about his kids, I think it's reasonable to expect a modicum of care from those you cared for when they were helpless. No matter how good the health system may be (and how good will it be when the elderly boomers are fracturing care budgets right and left ? Some council care staff will almost certainly be cut this year - what will it be like in fifteen or twenty years?), there's nothing like familiar faces at the bedside, or popping in at your house.

We're entering unknown territory, both energetic and demographic. The industrial revolution and our subsequent economic growth has been built on ever-cheaper energy - and it's going to get more and more expensive. Similarly 'our' population has been ever-increasing - but as I've blogged many a time and oft, that came to a halt twenty years back and the decline has only been halted then reversed by mass immigration - to the point where nearly a quarter of children in English primaries are ethnic minority.

According to this interesting Weekly Standard piece by Jonathan V Last, "no society has ever experienced prosperity in the wake of contracting population." I'd like to see some references for that - while it's common-sense, is it the prosperity driving the increasing population ? Affordable Family Formation, in fact ? And contracting population historically hasn't tended to be a matter of choice - think the Black Death or the Second World War.

It strikes me that a number of factors are coming together. Our elites are terribly keen on economic growth. We've had getting on for 200 years of exceptional growth since Trevithick, Boulton and Watt. This has been accompanied by population growth, and I doubt many people worried about whether and to what extent the two were connected. The creation of the post-war Welfare State was/is also predicated upon population growth - as 'National Insurance' is no such thing, and pensions/benefits are paid straight out of government income.

But energy supplies are getting more and more expensive, and people are having fewer babies all over the world. What does this mean for growth ? Doesn't look rosy to me.

In 1950, China had 550 million people; today it is home to 1.33 billion. According to projections from the United Nations’ Population Division, -China’s population will peak at 1.458 billion in 2030. But then it will begin shrinking. By 2050, China will be down to 1.408 billion and losing 20 million people every five years.

At the same time, the average age in China will rise dramatically. In 2005, China’s median age was 32. By 2050, it will be 45, and a quarter of the Chinese population will be over the age of 65. The government’s pension system is almost nonexistent, and One-Child has eliminated the traditional support system of the extended family—most people no longer have brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, or nephews. It is unclear what sort of havoc this atomization will wreak on their society. China will have 330 million senior citizens with no one to care for them and no way to pay for their upkeep. It is, Eberstadt observed, “a slow-motion humanitarian tragedy already underway.”

By 2050, the age structure in China will be such that there are only 1.6 workers—today the country has 5.4—to support each retiree.

This looks like trouble for China. But most of her competitors will be in worse trouble. Prosperity isn't just a question of lots of babies - or South Yemen and Burkina Faso would be economic powerhouses. California's seen mass immigration from the failed state to the south - and no one would say the Californian economy's in better shape than thirty years back. Germany and Japan will hit the demographic buffers first, while Britain and the US will IMHO find that quantity of people isn't a substitute for quality.

"Today there are 26.6 million legal immigrants living in America and roughly 11.3 million illegals. We need these workers to prop up the entitlement programs we’re no longer having enough babies to fund. "

How's that working out in the Golden State ?

One of the best predictors of fertility is education: The more educated a woman is, the fewer children she will have. The total fertility rate for American women without a high school diploma is 2.45. With each subsequent level of educational attainment, fertility falls—it drops to 1.6 for women with a graduate degree. One of the drivers of our fertility decline was the making of college de rigueur for middle-class women.

Education level is a fair proxy for intelligence in a Western democracy. The above implies that we're getting more stupid, as clever women fail to pass on their clever genes. This also doesn't bode well for economic growth.

So for all the above reasons, the rate of growth we became used to for the last two centuries seems to be in danger, if not on the way out. Which society will be the first to successfully adjust to this ? I don't see any preparation for it anywhere in the world.