Question: How might dramatic population declines in Europe, and the severe economic and political challenges they pose to countries like Germany, which may soon see its pension system collapse under the weight of its own demographic decline, affect élite thinking about the family? Many scholars, public policy analysts, and journalists I'm familiar with tend to assume that the family is simply destined to grow ever weaker. Might dramatic demographic developments change élite thinking about the family? Might such developments also change the kinds of family-related public policies Western élites support?
During the 19th and especially the 20th century, the state gradually took over many of the functions once performed by the family—notably education and support in old age. Élites have generally cheered this process on. But more and more in the future, individuals will find that they cannot rely on the élites who govern them. They will see health and pension benefits cut, even as taxes rise. They will see funding for education squeezed by the ever growing burden of providing even minimal benefits to the dependent elderly. This implies that more and more people will be forced to rely again on the traditional, extended family. People will need to have children and raise them well if they hope to find security in old age. For the same reason, they will also have to sacrifice on behalf of their aging parents so that their own children grow up to see this as a moral duty.
Today, élites who are uncomfortable with this future are calling for the state to take over still more responsibilities from the family—for example, by offering subsidies for child care, greater family allowances, or even bonuses to parents, all of which are being tried in Europe and much of Asia. I'm not opposed to such measures on ideological grounds, but I'm doubtful about their potential to boost the birthrate for more than a short time unless very serious amounts of money are involved, and that creates huge political problems.
If you are going to pay people to have children, you're going to spend a lot on people who would have had them anyway. And meanwhile, people who currently see no reason to become parents are not going to be persuaded by the offer of even tens of thousands of dollars in benefits. In the United States, the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through age 18, according to government estimates, exceeds $200,000—not including college. Meanwhile, in an age in which most women have the opportunity to join the paid workforce, the cost of motherhood—in lost wages and compromised careers—is often measured in the millions.
The huge bundle of benefits World War II veterans received under the G.I. Bill does seem to have contributed to that era's baby boom. But in those days, we didn't have to pay for Medicare, and Social Security was only a tiny percentage of federal spending. The median age of voters was also much lower then than now, and the feminist and environmental movements were still in the future. For all these reasons, I think élites are going to have a hard time selling pronatalism on a scale that's sufficient to the problem.
In the end, I see élites simply losing their legitimacy because they cannot maintain, much less expand the welfare state in an aging society.
Question: If the demographic predictions you make in The Empty Cradle come to pass, how might they affect the relative position of orthodox religions in the West? In other words, what role might Islam, evangelical Protestantism, or traditional Catholicism play in Western countries that have experienced subreplacement fertility for 40 to 50 years? How might their distinctive approaches to family life look to ordinary people? To élites?
On current trends, Europe's population just withers away. But I don't expect current trends to continue indefinitely in Europe or the West in general, for a special reason.
In Asian countries such as Japan, nearly everyone eventually marries and eventually has, almost without exception, one child. In Europe, and the West in general, by contrast, there is far more diversity in reproductive behavior. Among American baby boomers, for example, nearly a fifth of us never had children, and another 17 percent had only one.
The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of the children that are being born are being produced by a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?
The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.
To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, or Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, devout member of these Abraham religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.
In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and nonbelievers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent. Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. Meanwhile, of course, the childless stand no chance of passing along their values to their progeny.
The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default. The West's total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. Let us just hope that this new age of faith will also be an age of peace.
W. Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, is the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Univ. of Chicago Press).Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.May/June 2007, Vol. 13, No. 3, Page 28
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