October 5th, 2012
Abe Greenwald touches on a very deep point about American culture:
There is a great and growing divide between what our political reality demands and what our culture now produces, and Bruni gets nowhere near it. Sacrifice is vanishing because the cultural institutions that promote or sanctify it—family, faith, and patriotism—are on the wane. “In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all [American] twenty-somethings were married,” a 2010 Pew study found. “In 2008, just 26% were.” And in 2011, American births fell to a 12-year low. To previous generations the demands of family meant a life defined by self-denial, delayed gratification, and the giving of one’s time, energy, and money. Is a 42 percent drop in those who claim such an existence supposed to have no effect on the quality of our national character?
As you might imagine, I have quite a lot to say about this in What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, which, coincidentally, is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, and Books-a-Million.
(That’s a temp cover–the final cover art should be coming soon-ish.)
0 comments“Overpopulation” and Population Density
July 13th, 2012
When I write about demographics and the problems with the world’s collapsing fertility rate the first bit of pushback I get is always the same: But the world is overcrowded already! We don’t need more people!
The second part of this argument is complicated but the first is not. The world only looks overcrowded if you live in a major metropolitan area. America, for instance, may look overcrowded if you live in New York or Los Angeles, but the view from Montana is quite different. Yesterday Galley Friends B.W. and K.S. sent me this wonderful graphic on how much space it would require to fit the entire world’s population in one place, using the densities of some pretty livable, modern cities. (Click to enlarge.)
There’s no real point to this–it’s a rhetorical exercise. But it highlights pretty nicely how uncrowded the world is. There are other arguments against population growth, but overcrowding isn’t one of them.
13 commentsDemography. Fertility. Marriage.
September 29th, 2011
If you’re in DC next Tuesday, I’ll be sitting on a panel about fertility, marriage, and the economy at AEI. Which isn’t exciting in and of itself, but Nick Eberstadt will also be there and Brad Wilcox will be headlining, and those two are stone-cold studs. You can register with AEI here if you want to swing by.
3 commentsThe U.N.’s Imaginary Babies
August 4th, 2011
I’ve got a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the U.N.’s 2010 revision of their global population projections.
Short version: Suddenly the U.N. thinks fertility decline isn’t such a big deal and that most population contraction won’t happen. That’s because they assume the fertility trends of all nations will follow the pattern of Scandinavia.
1 commentNumbers of Childless Women
August 3rd, 2011
The New York Post finds a fertility expert who thinks that 47 percent of women under 44 are childless. Statistics can be misleading.
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